Space Mission

The study of exoplanets is without any doubt the most active and disrupting field in today astronomy. I had often blogged about it since it is my little obsession. Unfortunately, I have a hard time to keep up with the amount of discoveries and announcements being made every week over the past 3 years. This post is a snapshot of the recent study of exoplanets: what we know, what have been recently discovered and what is coming soon. Source: en.wikipedia.org via Franck on Pinterest Today (May 2 2012) the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia lists the characteristics of 763 exoplanets.  Exoplanet App contains 760 discovered exoplanets. The NASA Planet... read more ❯

Join us on Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - 7:00pm at the Colloquium room of the SETI Institute to hear a talk by Andrew Nelson, Chief Operating Officer of XCOR. Title: The Trillion Dollar Space Enterprise --> Or How The Lynx Suborbital Vehicle Will Change The World by Andrew Nelson, Chief Operating Officer of XCOR Abstract: Fully resuable spacecraft are the critical enabler for regular, low cost and safe access to space, and such access will enable space utilization in ways we've only dreamed about in the past. Much as the early ARPANET laid the foundation... read more ❯

There will be an oral session on Evolution and Exploration of Asteroids tomorrow from 8am to 10am, followed by a poster session from 1:40pm to 6pm, at the AGU Fall Conference, San Francisco, CA. Ben Weiss, Linda Elkins-Tanton (both from MIT) and myself are conveners of this session. It will be chaired by A. Mainzer (JPL) and myself. I am attaching the schedule of the session below. We will discuss the recent and future space missions dedicated to the Exploration of asteroids in the main-belt, the contribution of space-based and ground-based telescopes, and new ideas on the evolution of asteroids and... read more ❯