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Abundant ‘Mini-Neptunes’ Form New Class of Alien Planets

There’s a new kind of planet to add to Kepler’s cornucopia of alien worlds, and you won’t find it in Earth’s own solar system.

Ground-based follow-up observations of planets found by NASA’sKepler spacecraft reveal the masses and densities of 16 new planets ranging between one and four times the size of Earth. Many of the newfound orbs, described at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, have a rocky core surrounded by a puffed-up envelope of gas, which scientists are calling “sub-Neptunes” or “mini-Neptunes”.

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Credit: Tanya Lewis, Geoff Marcy/NASA Ames Research Center

After nearly a decade of development, construction, and testing, the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) is pointing skyward and collecting light from distant worlds with the help of a special starlight-blocking device, called a coronagraph, built at the American Museum of Natural History.

This is Gemini Planet Imager’s first-light image of the light scattered by a disk of dust orbiting the young star HR4796. The narrow ring is thought to be dust from asteroids or comets left behind by planet formation; some scientists have theorized that the sharp edge of the ring is defined by an unseen planet.

Processing by Marshall Perrin, Space Telescope Science Institute

A pair of colossal stars, WR 25 and Tr16-244, located within the open cluster Trumpler 16 of the Carina Nebula.
Image by ESA & NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope

On Jan. 23, 2014, 9:33 p.m. EST, NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite L (TDRS-L) blasted off aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The 3.8 ton critical communications relay satellite is now safely in orbit and will become part of a network providing high-data-rate communications to the International Space Station (ISS), Hubble Space Telescope, launch vehicles and a host of other research spacecraft that relay absolutely critical flight, telemetry and science data.

Without the TDRS network of relay satellites, the ISS, Hubble, and other spacecraft would not be able to function. The “L” craft is the 12th in this series of communications satellites and is identical to the “K” which was launched in 2013 and marked the first of the third generation of TDRS satellites.

NASA will now conduct a three month in-orbit checkout, and the next spacecraft in this series, TDRS-M, is on track to be ready for launch in late 2015.

Take action. Tell Congress that your support doubling NASA’s funding so that they will never have to worry about the fate of critical missions like this one.

On Jan. 23, 2014, 9:33 p.m. EST, NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite L (TDRS-L) blasted off aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The 3.8 ton critical communications relay satellite is now safely in orbit and will become part of a network providing high-data-rate communications to the International Space Station (ISS), Hubble Space Telescope, launch vehicles and a host of other research spacecraft that relay absolutely critical flight, telemetry and science data.

Without the TDRS network of relay satellites, the ISS, Hubble, and other spacecraft would not be able to function. The “L” craft is the 12th in this series of communications satellites and is identical to the “K” which was launched in 2013 and marked the first of the third generation of TDRS satellites.

NASA will now conduct a three month in-orbit checkout, and the next spacecraft in this series, TDRS-M, is on track to be ready for launch in late 2015.

Take action. Tell Congress that your support doubling NASA’s funding so that they will never have to worry about the fate of critical missions like this one.

On Jan. 23, 2014, 9:33 p.m. EST, NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite L (TDRS-L) blasted off aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The 3.8 ton critical communications relay satellite is now safely in orbit and will become part of a network providing high-data-rate communications to the International Space Station (ISS), Hubble Space Telescope, launch vehicles and a host of other research spacecraft that relay absolutely critical flight, telemetry and science data.

Without the TDRS network of relay satellites, the ISS, Hubble, and other spacecraft would not be able to function. The “L” craft is the 12th in this series of communications satellites and is identical to the “K” which was launched in 2013 and marked the first of the third generation of TDRS satellites.

NASA will now conduct a three month in-orbit checkout, and the next spacecraft in this series, TDRS-M, is on track to be ready for launch in late 2015.

Take action. Tell Congress that your support doubling NASA’s funding so that they will never have to worry about the fate of critical missions like this one.

On Jan. 23, 2014, 9:33 p.m. EST, NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite L (TDRS-L) blasted off aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The 3.8 ton critical communications relay satellite is now safely in orbit and will become part of a network providing high-data-rate communications to the International Space Station (ISS), Hubble Space Telescope, launch vehicles and a host of other research spacecraft that relay absolutely critical flight, telemetry and science data.

Without the TDRS network of relay satellites, the ISS, Hubble, and other spacecraft would not be able to function. The “L” craft is the 12th in this series of communications satellites and is identical to the “K” which was launched in 2013 and marked the first of the third generation of TDRS satellites.

NASA will now conduct a three month in-orbit checkout, and the next spacecraft in this series, TDRS-M, is on track to be ready for launch in late 2015.

Take action. Tell Congress that your support doubling NASA’s funding so that they will never have to worry about the fate of critical missions like this one.