We now have 6 astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as 3 new astronauts of Expedition 44 joined the 3 already on board. The Russian Soyuz successfully rendezvoused with ISS just after midnight EDT on 7/23/15.
NASA's exoplanet hunting spacecraft Kepler was the topic of a news conference on 7/23/15. It was announced that Kepler had "confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.”
"The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone -- the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet -- of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030."
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| Artist's Conception of Kepler 452-b (R) & Earth (L) CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle |
What a time we live in - exploring our own solar system and discovering new planets beyond our own system.
Sky Guy in VA
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