Extrasolar Planets
The big news this week is the discovery of the smallest exoplanet yet discovered, Gliese 581 e in the constellation Libra. The new planet is just twice the mass of earth, and orbits it’s red dwarf parent star in just under 4 days.
Gliese 581 is just 20 light years away and has 3 other known planets. Extra solar planet hunters are finding more and more multi planet systems around nearby dwarf stars. Gliese 876, for example, is another similar multi planet system, just 15 light years away in the constellation Aquarius. 55 Cancri is another similar system, except it is a yellow dwarf binary system. In spite of orbiting very different parent stars, these multi planet solar systems are structurally similar to our own solar system.
In other news, a recent article suggests our galaxy is probably dirty with sister earths, greatly increasing the likelihood of finding life on other planets.
Mercury
MESSENGER has finally sent back new images from it’s 3rd flyby of Mercury.
Earth
China has announced specifications for a new super heavy lifter. The new launch platform will weigh 675 tons, and be capable of launching a 12 ton payload to GEO or 25 tons to LEO. ESA has launched 2 new space telescopes, new space telescopes, Herschel and Planck.
Moon
India’s Chandrayaan-1 has sent new images of the moon to probe the possible existence of water in permanently shadowed craters.
Mars
Spirit has been plagued by troubles. First, a glitch caused a loss of data from memory. To make maters worse, Spirit has become badly stuck in loose sand. Mission engineers are still working on a plan to try to get out of the difficult situation.
In other Mars news, the Russian Phobos-Grunt sample return mission to the moon Phobos will also include a sample of microbes from Antarctica to see if they can survive the trip.
DSR 2.8