Extrasolar Planets

The status of Pluto as a planet was never entirely certain for over 75 years since its discovery. It is the tenth largest planetary object in order of ascending size, right after dwarf planet Eris. Our former ninth planet was discovered by Clyde W. Tombaugh on February 18, 1930, and it is the most widely recognized dwarf planet in our Solar System, and the Kuiper belt's largest object. Pluto's status as the ninth planet from our Sun was reviewed in 2006 due to an International Astronomical Union debate on how to classify such large objects. Even up to this current day and age, despite its status demotion to dwarf planet, Pluto is still widely regarded as a favorite among planetary objects in our Solar System and these provocative photographs were taken as firsts by the New Horizons satellite just last year to finally show just how much of a mysterious and puzzling place it really is.

The New Horizons space probe was designed by NASA to study the extreme conditions of dwarf planet Pluto and its natural satellite Charon, about 3.6 billion miles away from our Sun. This mission, not unlike NASA's Messenger probe, which also finalized a journey to explore the innermost conditions of our Solar System near Mercury earlier the same year, took nine and a half years to complete since its launch in January 19, 2006. The New Horizons satellite was successful at localizing and imaging Pluto and its moon, also detecting many surprising and familiar surface features including an atmosphere, glaciers, mountainous regions, great plains, and even water ice distributed all over its surface terrain. Arriving at Pluto has appealed to our collective sense of bewilderment for reminding us about how beautiful and exciting rediscovering a foreign planet really is.


Pluto with its moon Charon on the left as New Horizons quickly approaches its main objective (Image: NASA).

In the midst of this first look at Pluto as our ex-ninth planet, we now have theories of a new extrasolar object, harboring ten times the gravity on Earth and a wondrously eccentric orbit, located right outside our Solar System. The ninth planet spot is now more coveted than ever!

Venusian Surface Features

Reprocessed perspectives of Venus taken by the Venera 13 probe in 1982 (Images: CCCP).

Venus is the second planet from our Sun and it is sometimes referred to as our "sister planet" due to its similar mass and size. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, and it shows its elegant charm in many ways. Besides not having a naturally orbiting satellite, Venus has the most circular revolution of any planet, a retrograde (clockwise) rotation, and a day that lasts longer than its own year. Its two main continents: the northern Ishtar Terra and southern Aphrodite Terra, are also both named after the Babylonian and Greek goddesses of love, respectively.

The images above are the first to truly capture a stunning view from on the planet's surface. Venus' geography and climate are radically different from that of Earth. Its exterior is believed to be shrouded in condensed sulfuric acid due to ongoing volcanic activity throughout its windy and craterless plains. Its atmosphere is almost entirely made up of carbon dioxide kept under a pressure that is 92 times greater than ours, with an average surface temperature of 735 K. Despite the harsh weather conditions, a Russian space probe was successfully able to gather this data before its electronics stopped working about two hours after touching the ground.

Journey to a Celestial Object

The European Space Agency (ESA) has confirmed last November 12, 2014, the very first time that a spacecraft, known by the name of Rosetta, was able to successfully drop its lander Philae onto the comet nucleus of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a ten year long voyage that began in March of 2004. As far as a soft landing goes, this event had a lengthy bounce to remember, placing the instrument in a deeply-shadowed region on the surface of 67P, where it was able to conduct partially its scientific exploration. After a few days of gathering data from the ice and vapor on the comet's exterior, Philae's batteries were almost completely depleted, with just enough energy to transmit fresh results back to the Rosetta mothership orbiting approximately 19 mi (30 km) above the surface. The lander, now in a state of hibernation, does have a backup solar-panel power source and just might receive enough sunlight to reactivate itself within the next few months. In addition, Rosetta is the first spacecraft to effectively orbit and escort a comet as it reaches its perihelion alongside component Philae.


Rosetta's Philae lander grips the surface of comet 67P in this illustration (Image: ESA).

It is thought that because of this study, 67P's water composition is mostly different from that of Earth's, and objects with this kind of provenance or composition indigenous to the Kuiper belt are not responsible for Earthly aqueous bodies. This mission is considered to be a great accomplishment for astrophysics, uncovering new and old motivations for space travel including mining extraterrestrial objects and discovering water's potential origin. Although it is not unlike NASA's early landing on an asteroid in 2001, an upcoming German and Japanese satellite is expected to achieve a similar endeavor with another space rock in the future in order to gain a better understanding of the resources available from space that are relevant to life.

Robotic Vehicles on Mars

Interest in exploring the Red Planet started with the first robots designed to investigate it in the 1960s, and continues today with the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, where recent efforts have shown to be what looks like evidence of an ancient riverbed and organic compounds on the Martian surface. Organic compounds are those with molecules containing carbon and are potential indicators of life.


Mars and Earth riverbeds in comparison (Image: NASA).


A landscape of Mars captured by Pathfinder in 1997 (Image: NASA).

Mars is the fourth planet from our Sun and is believed to be about 10.7% the mass of Earth and approximately half of its size. It is currently thought that sustainable life on Mars may be possible and might have existed there a long time ago, if Earth and Mars share similar planetary histories. We know that they both have polar ice caps, an atmosphere, and exceptional terrain features. With several vehicles set to test for habitability on Mars in the future, humans will be able to properly assess whether a manned mission to Mars prevails as a safe and advantageous exploration plan.

Deep Space Satellite Exploration

Both Voyager 1 and 2 are displayed above (Images: NASA).

The NASA/JPL Voyager Satellite Program actively controls these two satellites. Launched in 1977, they are at the present moment the farthest known, still working man-made objects to ever travel across our Solar System. Please enjoy the link provided!

Special Note: The first artificial satellite to complete an orbital circuit around our planet was Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957. This date marks the beginning of what is classically referred to as the Space Age. :-]

Water on the Moon

With the discovery of evidence confirming the existence of water on the Moon on October 9, 2009, the Moon is no longer thought of as a dry space rock. NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, has reportedly found a significant amount of frozen water on the floor of a lunar crater.


Centaur being launched towards the Moon by LCROSS (Image: NASA).

LCROSS was designed to look for signs of water near the Moon's South Pole. The probe itself was successful at detecting natural water in the form of ice particle debris within the impact plumes created by the empty Centaur rocket stage's collision with the Moon.


The satellite's impact locations on the Moon's surface (Images: NASA).

The satellite made a total of two collisions on the Moon's surface, which were studied by it, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) partner satellite, and telescopes all over the world. The first LCROSS impact was from the Centaur rocket component, ejected towards Cabeus crater (red) near the Moon's South Pole (green). Once water particles were successfully identified, the second impact was caused by the LCROSS probe itself crashing into the surrounding Cabeus crater area (blue) to complete the mission. The LRO remained in orbit collecting data and did not undergo any collision.

Lunar water can be used by astronauts as a natural resource while in space. It is not practical to transport the amount of Earth water needed for long-term human space exploration into space, so this discovery provides astronauts with a longer potential stay on the Moon. The LCROSS and LRO were the first two missions carried out by NASA as a part of the United States' 2004 Vision for Space Exploration program, designed to increase public enthusiasm for space exploration.

NASA has been preparing for a return mission to the Moon in order to conduct research and attempt to live off the land in 2018 or 2019, a date that would mark the 50th Anniversary of NASA's first manned Moon landing, Apollo 11 (1969).