US-based space agency NASA has managed to beam a HD video from the International Space Station to Earth using a new laser communications device. The ‘Hello World’ video was the first ever to “travel” via this technology.

The technology used was the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS). It took OPALS 3.5 seconds to transmit the “Hello World!” video – the process would have taken more than 10 minutes to complete using the more traditional downlink process. (...)

Liquid Water Discovered on Surface of Minnesota

NASA's Kepler mission announced Wednesday the discovery of 715 new planets. These newly-verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system.

Nearly 95 percent of these planets are smaller than Neptune, which is almost four times the size of Earth. This discovery marks a significant increase in the number of known small-sized planets more akin to Earth than previously identified exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system.

"The Kepler team continues to amaze and excite us with their planet hunting results," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "That these new planets and solar systems look somewhat like our own, portends a great future when we have the James Webb Space Telescope in space to characterize the new worlds.”

Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system roughly two decades ago, verification has been a laborious planet-by-planet process. Now, scientists have a statistical technique that can be applied to many planets at once when they are found in systems that harbor more than one planet around the same star.

To verify this bounty of planets, a research team co-led by Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., analyzed stars with more than one potential planet, all of which were detected in the first two years of Kepler's observations — May 2009 to March 2011.

The research team used a technique called verification by multiplicity, which relies in part on the logic of probability. Kepler observes 150,000 stars, and has found a few thousand of those to have planet candidates. If the candidates were randomly distributed among Kepler's stars, only a handful would have more than one planet candidate. However, Kepler observed hundreds of stars that have multiple planet candidates. Through a careful study of this sample, these 715 new planets were verified.

This method can be likened to the behavior we know of lions and lionesses. In our imaginary savannah, the lions are the Kepler stars and the lionesses are the planet candidates. The lionesses would sometimes be observed grouped together whereas lions tend to roam on their own. If you see two lions it could be a lion and a lioness or it could be two lions. But if more than two large felines are gathered, then it is very likely to be a lion and his pride. Thus, through multiplicity the lioness can be reliably identified in much the same way multiple planet candidates can be found around the same star. (...)

(Image: NASA/WMAP Science Team)

In 1964, a pair of engineers at Bell Labs in New Jersey tried to build a better antenna and ended up uncovering the origins of the universe. After ruling out city noise, nuclear bombs and pigeon poop, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson argued that a strange radio hiss in their readings was the first confirmed signal of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This relic glow emerged as a result of the big bang and now permeates the universe.

The discovery solidified big bang theory as our best explanation for cosmic origins, and Penzias and Wilson went on to net a Nobel prize. Now, 50 years later, the CMB (pictured above) has helped us figure out the universe's age, shape and components, as well as details about how it has evolved. But with almost every discovery, the CMB raised new and more vexing questions. Here are six of the biggest lingering mysteries sparked by studies of the big bang. (...)

• Design calls for a suite of 34 telescopes to be mounted on a single satellite platform
• Mission should confirm and characterise hundreds of rocky worlds in habitable zones
• Its technology would have the sensitivity also to detect the planets' moons and rings
• Intricate measurements of the host stars (asteroseismology) would yield key information
• To launch from Sinnamary in French Guiana on a Soyuz rocket in 2023/2024
• Plato would be stationed 1.5 million km from Earth on its "nightside"

A telescope to find rocky worlds around other stars has been selected for launch by the European Space Agency's Science Policy Committee.

Known as Plato, the mission should launch on a Soyuz rocket in 2024.

The observatory concept was chosen following several years of assessment in competition with other ideas.

It is expected to cost Esa just over 600 million euros, although hardware contributions from member states will take this closer to a billion (£800m).

Astronomers have so far found over 1,000 planets beyond our Solar System, but none as yet has been shown to be truly Earth-like in terms of its size and distance from a Sun similar to our own.

The PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars mission will look to change that.

It will be tuned specifically to seek out rocky worlds orbiting in the "habitable zone" - the region around a star where water can keep a liquid state.

"Plato will be our first attempt to find nearby habitable planets around Sun-like stars that we can actually examine in sufficient detail to look for life," said Dr Don Pollacco, the University of Warwick researcher who leads the Plato Science Consortium.

"Nearly all the small transiting planets discovered so far have been beyond our technology to characterise. Plato will be a game-changer, allowing many Earth-like planets to be detected and confirmed and their atmospheres examined for signs of life.

"Plato planets will allow us to develop and test theories of planet evolution, understanding the type of small planets in the Universe and the real frequency of Earth-like planets," he told BBC News.

Plato is not really one telescope but rather a suite of 34 telescopes mounted on a single satellite.

The intention is for this array to sweep about half the sky, to investigate some of its brightest and nearest stars.

The observatory will monitor these stars for the tell-tale tiny dips in light that occur when planets move across their faces.

An important part of this investigation will be to perform an intricate study of the host stars themselves, using their pulsations to probe their structure and properties.

Such observations, referred to as asteroseismology, would provide key, complementary information for the proper characterisation of the rocky worlds.

The mission will be led by Dr Heike Rauer at DLR, the German space agency.

The key British hardware contribution will be the camera system that sits behind the telescope suite.

This will incorporate 136 charge-coupled devices (CCDs) produced by the e2v company in Chelmsford, Essex. Just under a metre square, the CCD system will be the biggest ever flown in space.

Plato should prove to be a good fit with other next-generation astronomical facilities.

These will include the ground-based European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), which will have a primary mirror some 39m in diameter. To be built in Chile, this giant should be operating by 2024, and will have the power to investigate the atmospheres of the Plato's newly discovered planets.

Plato is the third medium-class launch opportunity to be offered under Esa's so-called Cosmic Vision programme, which defines the organisation's space science priorities.

The first two to be selected were Solar Orbiter, a space telescope to study the Sun, to launch in 2017; and Euclid, a telescope to investigate "dark energy", to fly in 2020.

Esa will now refine the final design of Plato and find an industrial contractor to lead the construction of the satellite.

The agency's national member states will need also to agree any contributions they wish to make over and above their mandatory commitments.

Once all this is done, the mission will be formally "adopted" - legal-speak for "final go-ahead". This should happen within the next two years.

The unanimous selection of Plato by the SPC on Wednesday will be immensely pleasing to the team behind the Eddington space telescope - an Esa mission to find distant planets and do asteroseismology that was cancelled due to budget woes in the early 2000s.