Nov 15th 2024
This Week in Space 137
Strange New Worlds
Kepler's Legacy With Dr. Jason Steffen
This week, Tariq and Rod talk with Dr. Jason Steffen, a professor of physics at UNLV and a member of the science team for the Kepler Space Telescope mission. This mission finally ended in 2018, but the discoveries keep coming. Kepler returned so much data that it was like "drinking from a firehose," Jason tells us. As many know, Kepler made massive strides in identifying a couple thousand verified exoplanets in its 4-year prime mission, but less known is its amazing transition to the follow-on mission. When two of its reaction wheels (maneuvering devices) failed by 2013, NASA turned to the science team for advisement, and the K2 (Kepler 2) mission was born, seeking to continue the work by aiming the telescope in a given direction and using the pressure of solar wind on its solar panels to keep it oriented. Also of interest to us is the fact that this 37-inch space telescope, which follows Earth in its orbit around the sun, is essentially a giant photometer, much like a focused light meter you might have used with your camera in the old days--except bigger and a wee bit more expensive. It's a fun episode, so join us for "Strange New Worlds" on TWiS.
Get "Hidden in the Heavens" (Amazon Affiliate): https://amzn.to/4ezX6eK
Headlines:
- Congressional UFO hearing: The House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability held a hearing called "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," featuring testimony from various experts and witnesses, sparking discussions about the existence of extraterrestrial life.
- The uncertain future of the Space Launch System (SLS): With the new administration focusing on efficiency and the potential involvement of SpaceX's Elon Musk, the fate of NASA's SLS rocket hangs in the balance, as alternative launch options like Falcon Heavy, New Glenn, and Starship are considered.
- Viking landers may have accidentally destroyed Martian microbes: A new study suggests that the Viking landers' life-detection experiments might have killed extreme arid-environment Martian microbes by exposing them to water, inside the lander's life science experiments, leading to false negative results.
- Voyager 2 data reveals Uranus' unique magnetic field: Scientists revisiting Voyager 2 data discovered that Uranus' magnetic field may have been affected by a solar wind event during the spacecraft's flyby, challenging our understanding of the planet's magnetic properties.
Main Topic - The Kepler Space Telescope and the Search for Strange New Worlds:
- Dr. Jason Steffen's background and journey to becoming a member of the Kepler science team in 2008, a year before launch
- The Kepler mission's primary goal: to measure the frequency of roughly Earth-sized planets in "Goldilocks" habitable orbits around sun-like stars
- How Kepler detects planets by measuring the dimming of a star's light as a planet transits in front of it
- The challenges faced by the Kepler mission, including massive amounts of data processing, artifact removal, and the need for automated analysis pipelines
- The discovery of thousands of exoplanets, with most being smaller and in shorter orbital periods than predicted, based on those in our solar system
- The failure of two reaction wheels (maneuvering mechanisms) and the ingenious solution to use solar wind pressure to stabilize the spacecraft, leading to the K2 mission
- K2's contributions to exoplanet research, including the study of WASP-47 and TRAPPIST-1 systems
- The future of exoplanet characterization with the James Webb Space Telescope and the Nancy Roman Telescope
- Dr. Steffen's book, "Hidden in the Heavens," which offers an insider's view of the Kepler mission's workings and science
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