Space news and Exploration II

The Laplace resonance in the Kepler-60 system

[1510.02776] The Laplace resonance in the Kepler-60 system
Krzysztof Gozdziewski, Cezary Migaszewski, Federico Panichi, Ewa Szuszkiewicz
(Submitted on 9 Oct 2015)
We investigate the dynamical stability of the Kepler-60 planetary system with three super-Earths. We first determine their orbital elements and masses by Transit Timing Variation (TTV) data spanning quarters Q1-Q16 of the KEPLER mission. The system is dynamically active but the TTV data constrain masses to ~4 Earth masses and orbits in safely wide stable zones. The observations prefer two types of solutions. The true three-body Laplace MMR exhibits the critical angle librating around 45 degrees and aligned apsides of the inner and outer pair of planets. In the Laplace MMR formed through a chain of two-planet 5:4 and 4:3 MMRs, all critical angles librate with small amplitudes of ~30 degrees and apsidal lines in planet's pairs are anti-aligned. The system is simultaneously locked in a three-body MMR with librations amplitude of ~10 degrees. The true Laplace MMR can evolve towards a chain of two-body MMRs in the presence of planetary migration. Therefore the three-body MMR formed in this way seems to be more likely state of the system. However, the true three-body MMR cannot be disregarded a priori and it remains a puzzling configuration that may challenge the planet formation theory.
 
[1510.02511] A narrow, edge-on disk resolved around HD 106906 with SPHERE

A narrow, edge-on disk resolved around HD 106906 with SPHERE

HD~106906AB is so far the only young binary system around which a planet has been imaged and a debris disk evidenced thanks to a strong IR excess. As such, it represents a unique opportunity to study the dynamics of young planetary systems. We aim at further investigating the close (tens of au scales) environment of the HD~106906AB system. We used the extreme AO fed, high contrast imager SPHERE recently installed on the VLT to observe HD~106906. Both the IRDIS imager and the Integral Field Spectrometer were used. We discovered a very inclined, ring-like disk at a distance of 65~au from the star. The disk shows a strong brightness asymmetry with respect to its semi-major axis. It shows a smooth outer edge, compatible with ejection of small grains by the stellar radiation pressure. We show furthermore that the planet's projected position is significantly above the disk's PA. Given the determined disk inclination, it is not excluded though that the planet could still orbit within the disk plane if at a large separation (2000--3000 au). We identified several additional point sources in the SPHERE/IRDIS field-of-view, that appear to be background objects. We compare this system with other debris disks sharing similarities, and we briefly discuss the present results in the framework of dynamical evolution
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[1510.02747] Direct imaging of an asymmetric debris disk in the HD 106906 planetary system

Direct imaging of an asymmetric debris disk in the HD 106906 planetary system

We present the first scattered light detections of the HD 106906 debris disk using Gemini/GPI in the infrared and HST/ACS in the optical. HD 106906 is a 13 Myr old F5V star in the Sco-Cen association, with a previously detected planet-mass candidate HD 106906b projected 650 AU from the host star. Our observations reveal a near edge-on debris disk that has a central cleared region with radius ∼50 AU, and an outer extent >500 AU. The HST data show the outer regions are highly asymmetric, resembling the ''needle'' morphology seen for the HD 15115 debris disk. The planet candidate is oriented ∼21deg away from the position angle of the primary's debris disk, strongly suggesting non-coplanarity with the system. We hypothesize that HD 106906b could be dynamically involved in the perturbation of the primary's disk, and investigate whether or not there is evidence for a circumplanetary dust disk or cloud that is either primordial or captured from the primary. We show that both the existing optical properties and near-infrared colors of HD 106906b are weakly consistent with this possibility, motivating future work to test for the observational signatures of dust surrounding the planet
 
NASA is testing CubeSat-based laser communications

NASA has teamed up with The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo to test a new CubeSat-mounted laser communication system. While the mission, known as the Optical Communications and Sensor Demonstration (OCSD), has already been successfully placed in orbit, the team is currently working to resolve an issues with its attitude control system.
 
China Exclusive: China aims to go deeper into space

2015-10-15 13:43:49
BEIJING, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- As China's exploration of the moon progresses, its space experts have begun considering going deeper into the solar system - to Mars, asteroids and Jupiter - and a manned deep-space mission.

At a recent conference on deep-space exploration in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, an official urged scientists and technologists to have a pioneering spirit.

"When exploring the unknown, we should not just follow others. China should be more creative," said Liu Jizhong, director of the lunar exploration program and space engineering center under the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.



Read more: http://news.xinhuane...c_134716387.htm


This is why china is going to be the super power in the future. They will likely mine the resources and we earth bound America won't be able to compete with them.

What is America's republican party want for America? Oh'yess, everything from paving our roads to educating our children is a fucking boondogoo.

I hate them.
 
The Ĝ Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. IV. The Signatures and Information Content of Transiting Megastructures
Jason T. Wright, Kimberly M. S. Cartier, Ming Zhao, Daniel Jontof-Hutter, Eric B. Ford
(Submitted on 15 Oct 2015)
Arnold (2005), Forgan (2013), and Korpela et al. (2015) noted that planet-sized artificial structures could be discovered with Kepler as they transit their host star. We present a general discussion of transiting megastructures, and enumerate ten potential ways their anomalous silhouettes, orbits, and transmission properties would distinguish them from exoplanets. We also enumerate the natural sources of such signatures.
Several anomalous objects, such as KIC 12557548 and CoRoT-29, have variability in depth consistent with Arnold's prediction and/or an asymmetric shape consistent with Forgan's model. Since well motivated physical models have so far provided natural explanations for these signals, the ETI hypothesis is not warranted for these objects, but they still serve as useful examples of how nonstandard transit signatures might be identified and interpreted in a SETI context. Boyajian et al. 2015 recently announced KIC 8462852, an object with a bizarre light curve consistent with a "swarm" of megastructures. We suggest this is an outstanding SETI target.
We develop the normalized information content statistic M to quantify the information content in a signal embedded in a discrete series of bounded measurements, such as variable transit depths, and show that it can be used to distinguish among constant sources, interstellar beacons, and naturally stochastic or artificial, information-rich signals. We apply this formalism to KIC 12557548 and a specific form of beacon suggested by Arnold to illustrate its utility.
[1510.04606] The \^G Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. IV. The Signatures and Information Content of Transiting Megastructures
 
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2015/10/...arly-december/

SpaceX is looking for its Falcon 9 to return to flight by late November or early December, a company official said.

“We believe in the next six to eight weeks we’ll be able to return to flight,” Lee Rosen, SpaceX vice president of mission and launch operations, said on Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress under way this week in Jerusalem.

The Falcon 9, which failed after 18 successful flights, will carry a communications satellite for Luxembourg-based SES SA.

The rocket also will deliver a tiny satellite for SpacePharma, a privately owned Israeli start-up, which developed a miniaturised laboratory for microgravity research.

The return to flight will mark the first launch of an upgraded Falcon 9 booster designed to lift heavier payloads into orbit.
 
Lunar Fuel and refueling greatly reduce cost of a Mars Mission

fueldepotstoMars.jpg

A MIT group has found that taking a detour to the moon to refuel would reduce the mass of a Mars mission upon launch by 68 percent. The most mass-efficient path involves launching a crew from Earth with just enough fuel to get into orbit around the Earth. A fuel-producing plant on the surface of the moon would then launch tankers of fuel...
 
Europe and Russia mission to assess Moon settlement

Quote

16 October 2015



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The European and Russian space agencies are to send a lander to an unexplored area at the Moon's south pole.

It will be one of a series of missions that prepares for the return of humans to the surface and a possible permanent settlement.

The spacecraft will assess whether there is water, and raw materials to make fuel and oxygen.

BBC News has obtained exclusive details of the mission, called Luna 27, which is set for launch in five years' time.

The mission is one of a series led by the Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos, to go back to the Moon.





http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-34504067
 
HATS-17b: A Transiting Compact Warm Jupiter in a 16.3 Days Circular Orbit
R. Brahm, A. Jordán, G. Á. Bakos, K. Penev, N. Espinoza, M. Rabus, J. D. Hartman, D. Bayliss, S. Ciceri, G. Zhou, L. Mancini, T.G. Tan, M. de Val-Borro, W. Bhatti, Z. Csubry, J. Bento, T. Henning, B. Schmidt, V. Suc, J. Lázár, I. Papp, P. Sári

[1510.05758] HATS-17b: A Transiting Compact Warm Jupiter in a 16.3 Days Circular Orbit
(Submitted on 20 Oct 2015)
We report the discovery of HATS-17b, the first transiting warm Jupiter of the HATSouth network. HATS-17b transits its bright (V=12.4) G-type (M⋆=1.131 ± 0.030 M⊙, R⋆=1.091+0.070−0.046 R⋆) metal-rich ([Fe/H]=+0.3 dex) host star in a circular orbit with a period of P=16.2546 days. HATS-17b has a very compact radius of 0.777 ± 0.056 RJ given its Jupiter-like mass of 1.338 ± 0.065 MJ. Up to 50% of the mass of HATS-17b may be composed of heavy elements in order to explain its high density with current models of planetary structure. HATS-17b is the longest period transiting planet discovered to date by a ground-based photometric survey, and is one of the brightest transiting warm Jupiter systems known. The brightness of HATS-17b will allow detailed follow-up observations to characterize the orbital geometry of the system and the atmosphere of the planet.
 
The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets. XXXVII. Bayesian re-analysis of three systems. New super-Earths, unconfirmed signals, and magnetic cycles
R. F. Díaz (1), D. Ségransan (1), S. Udry (1), C. Lovis (1), F. Pepe (1), X. Dumusque (2, 1), M. Marmier (1), R. Alonso (3,4), W. Benz (5), F. Bouchy (1,6), A. Coffinet (1), A. Collier Cameron (7), M. Deleuil (6), P. Figueira (8), M. Gillon (9), G. Lo Curto (10), M. Mayor (1), C. Mordasini (5), F. Motalebi (1), C. Moutou (6, 11), D. Pollacco (12), E. Pompei (10), D. Queloz (1, 13), N. Santos (8, 14), A. Wyttenbach (1) ((1) Observatoire astronomique de l'Université de Genève, Versoix, Switzerland, (2) Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, (3) Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, (4) Dpto. de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, (5) Physikalisches Institut, Universitat Bern, Bern, Switzerland, (6) Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, LAM (Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille), Marseille, France, (7) School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, North Haugh, St Andrews, UK, (8) Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto, CAUP, Porto, Portugal, (9) Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique, Université de Liège, Liège, Belgium, (10) European Southern Observatory, Santiago, Chile, (11) Canada France Hawaii Telescope Corporation, Kamuela, USA, (12) Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, (13) Cavendish Laboratory, J J Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, UK, (14) Departamento de Física e Astronomia, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal)
(Submitted on 21 Oct 2015)
We present the analysis of the entire HARPS observations of three stars that host planetary systems: HD1461, HD40307, and HD204313. The data set spans eight years and contains more than 200 nightly averaged velocity measurements for each star. This means that it is sensitive to both long-period and low-mass planets and also to the effects induced by stellar activity cycles. We modelled the data using Keplerian functions that correspond to planetary candidates and included the short- and long-term effects of magnetic activity. A Bayesian approach was taken both for the data modelling, which allowed us to include information from activity proxies such as log(R′HK) in the velocity modelling, and for the model selection, which permitted determining the number of significant signals in the system. The Bayesian model comparison overcomes the limitations inherent to the traditional periodogram analysis. We report an additional super-Earth planet in the HD1461 system. Four out of the six planets previously reported for HD40307 are confirmed and characterised. We discuss the remaining two proposed signals. In particular, we show that when the systematic uncertainty associated with the techniques for estimating model probabilities are taken into account, the current data are not conclusive concerning the existence of the habitable-zone candidate HD40307 g. We also fully characterise the Neptune-mass planet that orbits HD204313 in 34.9 days.
 
Russian space agency announces plans for manned Moon mission



By Jessica Orwig 28/10/2015


Before 2030, Russia plans to land its first cosmonauts on the moon, and Europe wants a piece of the action.
They're a little late for the great space race of the 1960s, but the mission is an admirable push for the reignited interest in manned deep-space travel.

On Tuesday, at a space and technology conference in Moscow, the head of Roscosmos Energia — Russia's version of NASA — announced: "A manned flight to the moon and lunar landing is planned for 2029."
 
A new hot Jupiter

EPIC 204129699b, a grazing transiting hot Jupiter on an 1.26-day orbit around a bright solar like star

We report the discovery of EPIC 204129699b, the first confirmed transiting hot Jupiter detected by the K2 space mission. We combined K2 photometry with FastCam lucky imaging and FIES and HARPS high-resolution spectroscopy to confirm the planetary nature of the transiting object and derived the system parameters. EPIC 204129699b is a 1.8-Jupiter-mass planet on an 1.26-day-orbit around a G7V star (M* = 0.91 Msun, R* = 0.78 Rsun). The planetary radius is poorly constrained (0.7 < Rp < 1.4 RJup ), owing to the grazing transit and the low sampling rate of the K2 photometry. The short orbital period and the brightness of the host star (V = 10.8 mag) make the system amenable to atmospheric characterization.
 

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