Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Europe's Cheops To Look For Habitable Planets
The European Space Agency has just approved a space mission to search for habitable planets. It plans on launching a new space telescope called Cheops (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite). It will build up a list of exoplanets for astronomers to further analyze.
(Cheops (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite))
To do this it will target nearby stars that ground-based telescopes have already shown to boast planets in orbit around them. From its vantage point in space, Cheops will be free of the distorting effects of Earth's atmosphere. Not only will it be able to analyse those worlds more precisely than is yet possible, it will also look for smaller planets around those stars that are impossible to see from the ground....to make progress, we need a mission capable of pivoting from star to star, to draw up a target list closer to home. Cheops is that mission.
It will look for the dip in light as a planet moves across the face of its parent star. It will detect planets down to the mass of the Earth and will have the sensitivity to show which planets have dense atmospheres. These will be the natural targets for the giant ground-based telescopes, and the next generation of space telescopes, that will analyse those atmospheres for signs of life.
The mission was officially approved last Friday, 19 October 2012, and is scheduled for launch in 2017. It will cost ESA no more than 50 million Euros, although additional funds can be used from elsewhere.
Fans of the Golden Age of science fiction may recall that Edmond Hamilton wrote about this idea in his thrilling 1936 short story Cosmic Quest:
I was near enough it now to set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching it for a habitable planet.These instruments were the wonderful ones our astronomers had perfected. With super-telescopic eyes each one scanned a part of the star field before them. And each mechanical eye, when it found planetary systems in its field, automatically shifted upon them a higher powered telespectroscope which recorded on permanent film the size, mean temperature and atmospheric conditions of these worlds.
(Read more about Hamilton's search for habitable planets)
(The telespectroscope recorded the conditions of these other worlds)
Via The Guardian.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/25/2012)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Spacecraft ")
Europa Clipper Plate Carries A Special Message
'...a universal cryptogram — yet it is one which can be interpreted by any intelligent creature on any planet in the Solar System!' -
China Wants To Build Mega Space Ships
'Don't do anything to endanger our shipping privileges...' - Frank Herbert, 1965.
Dream Of Building Your Own Rocket?
Fiorello Bodoni, you inspire all of us.
Used Dragon Cargo Spacecraft Will Fly Again
'the overstrained meters made the smaller craft skittish as a young horse...' - Robert Heinlein
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Pole-Dancing Stripperbot Robot
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
Collective Superintelligence Is At Hand!
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
Instant Journalists: Ordinary People With Cell Phones
'We'll show them whose planet this is!'
Health Kiosk Has No Human Doctor
'The electronic body analyzer had been developed...'
Meta's Horizon Studio's Unique Avatars From Text Prompts
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
VaMEx Biomimetic Mars Robot Inspired By Skink
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
NEO Brain Computer Interface (BCI)
'The remains of the lace took on the rough shape of a brain...'
Did Frank Herbert Predict Bistable Displays Like E-Ink?
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
Monolith One Giant Industrial Metal 3D-printer
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Mooncrete' Lunar Regolith Concrete (LRC)
'And here they began to build...'
China's 'Magpie Drone' Ornithopter
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
MAI-Voice-2 Microsoft Text-To-Speech
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
Tumblin' Tumbleweed Rovers To Eplore Mars
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
Tentacled Robot Captures Space Debris
Preventing annoying space debris build-up.
Prufrock-MB2 Ready In Nashville
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
DIY Robotic Content Farming
'The chief wheeled to the master machine and pressed a button.'
