The Latest Astronomy News, Essay Example

Over the last ten years, most of the news related to astronomy has focused upon the planet Mars and the Mars Rover which continues to explore the Red Planet in search of new information related to whether Mars once harbored life. But today, Mars has been eclipsed by another Solar System denizen known as Pluto which on average lies some 4 billion miles from the Earth. Named after the Greek god of the Underworld, Pluto is about to be visited for the first time in human history by a space craft called New Horizons, launched by NASA more than nine years ago. This spacecraft is going to provide us with some very close-up pictures of the planet Pluto this coming July 14th, an event which NASA says will “open the door to an entirely new “third” zone of mysterious small planets and planetary building blocks in the Kuiper Belt” (NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft, 2015) which lies beyond the orbit of Pluto and as some scientist believe, is the home of thousands of comets that orbit our Solar System once every 10 million years (Hamilton, 2005, p. 156).

According to John Grunsfeld, the Associate Administrator of the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC, “Scientific literature is filled with papers on the characteristics of Pluto and its moons from ground based and Earth orbiting space observations,” but until now, mankind has never been given the opportunity to “study Pluto up- close and personal.” As a result adds Grunsfeld, “Our knowledge of what the Pluto systems is really like will expand exponentially and I have no doubt there will be exciting discoveries” (NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft, 2015).

As noted by Leslie Young, a deputy project scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, the planet Pluto, due to being so far away from the Earth, has managed to hold onto its many mysteries since its initial discovery in the early 1930’s. As the largest known body near the Kuiper Belt, Pluto offers “a nitrogen atmosphere, complex seasons, distinct surface markings, an ice-rock interior that may harbor an ocean, and at least five moons.” One of these, Charon, “may itself sport an atmosphere or an interior ocean, and possibly even evidence of recent surface activity” (NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft, 2015). So with these facts in mind, this coming July is going to be an exciting time in the world of astronomy.

Another fascinating area related to current news in astronomy is the on-going search for exoplanets or planets that lie outside of our own Solar System in other star systems. Thanks to the amazing light-gathering power of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, we now have information on over 4,000 exoplanets that lie far beyond the Earth in the vast reaches of our Milky Way Galaxy. This telescope also “continuously monitors more than 150,000 stars beyond our solar system,” many of which have planets orbiting them much like our own Earth (PlanetQuest, 2015). However, most of the exoplanets so far discovered as gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn with atmospheres of frozen ammonia and methane and temperatures dipping well below 200 degrees Fahrenheit (Hamilton, 2005, p. 198).

What is most exciting about this quest for another Earth is that the Kepler Space Telescope has validated the existence of more exoplanets, “six of which are near-Earth size and orbit in the habitable zone of stars similar to our Sun” which means that these planets could harbor life. As NASA reminds us, “these newly-validated planets are located in their distant suns’ habitable zone, the range of distances from the host star where liquid water might exist on the surface of an orbiting planet” (PlanetQuest, 2015). Chances are rather good that at least one of these exoplanets is similar to our Earth with a watery surface that might harbor life.

With all of this in mind, it is hard to imagine what the near future may hold, especially considering that the chances are pretty good that someday we might discover an exoplanet just like the Earth that harbors living things, perhaps even intelligent life.

References

Hamilton, J.G. (2005). Exploring the Solar System. New York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft nears historic July 14 encounter with Pluto. (2015).

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Retrieved from https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=49024

PlanetQuest: The search for another Earth. (2015). Retrieved from http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/news/180