Deep Space

I’m putting this first because this is the coolest news.  COROT has discovered the smallest exoplanet yet, COROT-Exo-7b.  The planet is just 2x earth’s diameter, orbiting very close to a sun like star once every 20 hours.  The surface temperature is predicted to reach 1000-1500 C.

Also, the Kepler mission, which is designed to search for earth like planets around other stars, is more or less ready for launch on 3/6/09

Near Earth Space

You’ve probably already heard about the spectacular collision of two satellites last week.

But you might not have heard about the 35 m asteroid 2009 DD45 which passed within 72,000 km of the earth on 3/2/09. That's less than twice the distance of a geosynchronous communication satellite.

And finally, Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft, an asteroid sample return mission, has managed to restart engines after 16 months.  It is now expected to return to earth with a sample of the surface of asteroid Itokawa some time in 2010, after traveling 4.5 billion kilometers.

The Moon

A quick summary of the news form our nearest neighbor:

• SELENE releases new more detailed moon map Thursday 2/12. 
• Chang'e-1 successfully impacts moon, no news yet on any science data collected from the impact. 
• NASA study's small robots for manned lunar landing site preparation
  

Mars

Spirit has recovered recovered from it’s fault .  Most likely explanation of earlier fault was a cosmic ray hit.  Also, it seems another cleaning event has occurred, increasing total output of the solar panels by 15%.  However, this increases the discretionary power budget from from 30 to 60 watt hours per day.  The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has entered safe mode.  And, Phoneix data finds possibility of thin films of liquid water on Mars.  In similar environments on earth, in particular the dry valleys in Antarctica, microorganisms survive using these thin films of water, sometimes only nanometers thick.  The possibility of life on Mars surviving under these conditions is tantalizing.

Deep space Report 2.2