Planets

Applications pour in for first manned Mars mission

New York: Applications are already pouring in for the ambitious Mars mission that aims to send an adventurous duo - a man and a woman - on a 501-day-long flyby around the Red planet in January 2018. Millionaire Dennis Tito, who became the first space tourist in 2001, had unveiled the Inspiration Mars' "Mission for America" in February this year.



Applications are now rolling in from enthusiasts, despite the fact that the selected couple may be crammed into a space the size of an recreational vehicle for more than a year, breathing recycled air, subsisting on dehydrated food and drinking their purified urine, 'LiveScience' reported. "We've already had a ton of applications," said Jane Poynter, president of the Paragon Space Development Corp, which has partnered with Inspiration Mars Foundation for the mission.

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Total solar eclipse darkens north Australia

Sydney: From boats bobbing on the Great Barrier Reef, to hot air balloons hovering over the rainforest, and the hilltops and beaches in between, tens of thousands of scientists, tourists and amateur astronomers watched as the sun, moon and Earth aligned and plunged northern Australia into darkness during a total solar eclipse on Wednesday. Stubborn clouds that many feared would ruin the view parted - somewhat - in north Queensland,...  

Venus, Jupiter and moon offer dazzling night show

Cape Canaveral: Stargazers of the world are getting a treat this weekend. On Saturday and again on Sunday, Venus, Jupiter and Earth's moon converge for a brilliant night show. Venus and Jupiter already are lining up in the western sky. In mid-February, the two planets were 20 degrees apart from a viewing perspective. The gap narrows to 10 degrees by month's end. A crescent moon joins the show this weekend...  

Diamond planets in Earth's galaxy possible: Study

Washington: Some alien planets in the Earth's galaxy could be made of diamonds, a new study has suggested. These potential giant terrestrial planets, whose insides could be up to 50 per cent diamond, are dubbed "carbon super-Earths" by scientists, according to the Space.com. A diamond planet would very likely be devoid of life and incapable of supporting living beings like us, scientists said. "We think a diamond planet must be...  

NASA launches Juno robot to explore Jupiter

Cape Canaveral: An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Friday, sending a robotic scout on its way to Jupiter to sniff out details about how the solar system formed. The rocket carrying NASA's Juno spacecraft lifted off at 12:25 p.m. (1625 GMT), the first step in a five-year, 445-million mile (716-million km) journey to the largest planet in the solar system. Launch was...  

NASA finds signs of flowing water on Mars

Washington: It's known that there are frozen water deposits on Mars. Now, it seems that there are seasonal streams of liquid water flowing across the surface of the Red Planet, say astronomers, including an Indian-origin scientist. In fact, it was US space agency NASA which said that pictures taken from its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft showed finger-like features which may be flows of salty water spilling over the rims of...  

Flipping Jupiters! Why planets spin backward

Washington: Some planets are just flipping backward. Of the more than 500 planets detected around stars besides our Sun, the vast majority appear to spin the same way the star does, scientists reported on Wednesday in the journal Nature. But some of these extrasolar planets spin in the opposite direction of the stars they orbit, astronomers found. These strange, backward-spinning planets are usually gassy giants called hot Jupiters, not rocky...  

Celestial delight: A rare planetary alignment

New Delhi: Star gazers have another grand celestial event to celebrate. The finest planetary conjunction of the year will happen on May 11 when Venus passes very close to the south of Jupiter. The two brightest planets on the sky will not get this close anytime before August 2014. Beginning May 11, the four planets Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Mars will rearrange themselves to form different patterns in the sky....  

Black hole wiped out all alien life?

London: A phenomenon known as a white dwarf hypernova could have sucked alien life into a black hole. Scientists have been long baffled how despite years of searching there has been no evidence of life beyond our planet. But now some astronomers believe the answer may lie in the destructive force of exploding stars - and claim ET (extraterrestrial) may simply have been wiped out. Hypernovas are essentially massive supernovas,...  

NASA spacecraft now circling Mercury - a first

Washington (AP): For the first time, Earth has a regular orbiting eye-in-the-sky spying on the solar system's smallest and strangest planet, Mercury. NASA's spacecraft called Messenger successfully veered into a pinpoint orbit Thursday night after a 6 1/2-year trip and 4.9 billion miles and tricky maneuvering to fend off the gravitational pull of the sun. It is the fifth planet in our solar system that NASA has orbited, in addition...  

First cosmic census: 50 billion planets found

London: The first cosmic census has estimated that there are 50 billion planets in the Milky Way. While over 500 million of those planets are in the Goldilocks zone, where the climate is thought to be not-too-hot and not-too-cold, and could support existence of life. The numbers were extrapolated from the early results of NASA's Kepler telescope, almost two years though a three-and-a-half year mission, which has cost 600 million...  

NASA discovers more planets outside solar system

New Delhi: NASA has found out more planets are two thousand light years away. We won't get there in our lifetimes. They're much larger than Earth, but need just a few days or months to complete an orbit. Which means they're closer to their star than Mercury is to our sun. Planetary Scientist, Kepler Science Jack Lissauer says, "This is the most compact system of planets discovered by any technique,...  

Nasa discovers 50 new habitable planets

Washington: An orbiting NASA telescope is finding whole new worlds of possibilities in the search for alien life, spotting more than 50 potential planets that appear to be in the habitable zone. In just a year of peering out at a small slice of the galaxy, the Kepler telescope has discovered 1,235 possible planets outside our solar system. Amazingly 54 of them are seemingly in the zone that could be...  

Black hole that can eat up solar system found

London: Astronomers have discovered what they say is the biggest ever black hole which weighs the same as 6.8 billion suns and could swallow our entire solar system. According to the scientists, the black hole, identified as M87, is as large as the orbit of Neptune and by far the largest and most distant galaxy in the nearby universe. As a point of comparison, the black hole at the centre...  

Other universes exist alongside our own

London: Scientists say they have found evidence that our universe was 'jostled' by other parallel universes in the distant past. The incredible claim emerged after they studied patterns in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) - the after-effects of the Big Bang. They say they may have found evidence that four circular patterns found in the CMB are 'cosmic bruises' where our universe has crashed into other universes at least...  

'Newly found super-Earth could be a waterworld'

London: A 'super-Earth' discovered recently some 40 light years away could be covered with either water vapour or a thick haze, scientists have said. The planet, which is 2.6 times bigger than Earth, has given scientists their first chance to analyse the atmosphere of a world outside the solar system. A team of astronomers who used the European Southern Observatory's 3.6m telescope in Chile to analyse the planet's atmosphere said...  

Can Earth survive Sun's explosion?

Peg V392b - the oldest planet - has survived its stars' explosive death throes. ...  

Watch celestial treat for next 10-days

People can watch a celestial wonder in the sky with as many as eight planets making appearance in a single month. ...  

China, Russia to jointly explore Mars

China and Russia will mount a joint effort to explore Mars and one of its moons in 2009, Chinese state media reported. ...  

Mar's South Pole full of frozen water

Mars' south polar region contains enough frozen water to cover the whole planet in a liquid layer, says study. ...