On Sunday, SpaceX aborted its rocket launch right at scheduled lift off. You can see in the GIF below:
DON'T MISS: Here's why SpaceX canceled its launch twice
LEARN MORE: Elon Musk's rocket landing could make space travel costs cheaper than a penthouse in NYC
SpaceX, led by tech magnate Elon Musk, tried to fire off one of its Falcon 9 rockets tonight from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
However, engineers ultimately scrubbed the launch.
This marks the company's third fruitless attempt to get the rocket and its satellite payload off the ground since Wednesday, February 24.
The rocket was supposed to take off at 6:46 p.m. ET, but two problems forced SpaceX to give up.
Right after SpaceX filled up its rocket with cryogenic fuel (a critical step in the launch countdown), a ship in the Atlantic Ocean slipped past a predetermined safety zone.
Musk said via Twitter that the company was "scrambling" to get the vessel to move, since — should anything go wrong — SpaceX didn't want to pose a threat to the people on board:
@SpaceX AF has placed launch on hold due to a boat entering the edge of the keep out zone. Scrambling helo to get them to move.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 28, 2016@SpaceX Launch aborted on low thrust alarm. Rising oxygen temps due to hold for boat and helium bubble triggered alarm.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 29, 2016But the 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket is a very odd bird.
Most rockets cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, yet sink to the ocean bottom after they deliver a payload to space. After boosting SES-9 into geostationary orbit, however, the Falcon 9 will try to autonomously land a huge piece of itself on a robotic ship at sea.
SpaceX attempted this on two separate occasions in the past year, but both rockets toppled onto the robo-ship and blew up into fireballs. (A third Falcon 9 was equipped to land, too, but never got the chance because it exploded shortly after launch.)
In fact, the company said in a press release that "a successful landing is not expected" for its next attempt.
Translation: We think our rocket will most likely explode into bits when it tries to land itself.
Still, the stakes can't be ignored.
Each of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets costs about $60 million. If SpaceX can land even part of that hardware, clean it up, and refuel it for a future launch, it'd be a history-making event.
It might also help usher in an era of spaceflight that's radically less expensive. Musk has said that a 100-fold cost reduction is possible, should his rocket-recycling scheme prove as repeatable and reliable as flying an airplane.
And there's reason to believe SpaceX just might succeed this time. On December 21, 2015, the company launched and landed a Falcon 9 rocket on solid ground.
It's not a robotic platform wobbling in the Atlantic Ocean, but it's still pretty impressive.
Now if only they could only get the new rocket off the ground.
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NOW WATCH: This is how Elon Musk wants to drastically reduce the cost of space flight
If the human race is to survive in the long-run, we will probably have to colonise other planets. Whether we make the Earth uninhabitable ourselves or it simply reaches the natural end of its ability to support life, one day we will have to look for a new home.
Hollywood films such as The Martian and Interstellar give us a glimpse of what may be in store for us. Mars is certainly the most habitable destination in our solar system, but there are thousands of exoplanets orbiting other stars that could be a replacement for our Earth. So what technology will we need to make this possible?
We effectively already have one space colony, the International Space Station (ISS). But it is only 350km away from Earth and relies on a continuous resupply of resources for its crew of six. Much of the technology developed for the ISS, such as radiation shielding, water and air recycling, solar power collection, is certainly transferable to future space settlements. However, a permanent space colony on the surface of another planet or moon adds a new set of challenges.
The first requirement for a human settlement is a habitat, an isolated environment able to maintain air pressure, composition (the amount of oxygen), and temperature, and protect the inhabitants from radiation. This is likely to be a relatively large and heavy structure.
Launching large, heavy objects into space is a costly and difficult job. Spacecraft since the Apollo missions, which comprised several modules that had to separate and dock, have been sent up in pieces and assembled by astronauts. But given the impressive steps forward we are seeing in autonomous control, the pieces of a colony habitat may be able to assemble themselves. Today, manoeuvres similar to the Apollo docking are performed completely automatically.
The alternative would be to carry a minimal “toolbox” from Earth and manufacture the habitat using locally-harvested resources. Specifically, 3D printers could be used to turn minerals from the local soil into physical structures. We’ve actually already started looking at making this possible. Private firm Planetary Resources has demonstrated 3D printing using raw material from a metal-rich asteroid sample found on Earth in an impact site. And NASA has installed a 3D printer on the ISS to show it can be used in zero-gravity, potentially as a way of making spacecraft components in space.
Once the habitat is built, the colony will need continuous supplies of water, oxygen, energy and food to sustain its inhabitants, presuming the colony wasn’t built on an idyllic Earth-like planet with these resources in abundance. Water is fundamental for life as we know it but could also be used to make propellant or radiation shielding.
An initial settlement would need to carry a certain amount of water and recycle all waste liquids. This is already done on the ISS, where no drop of liquid (washing, sweat, tears, or even urine) is wasted. But a colony would also likely try to extract water, possibly from underground supplies of liquid – as may exist on Mars– or ice, as can been found under the surface of certain asteroids.
Water also provides a source of oxygen. On the ISS, oxygen is generated by using a process known as electrolysis to separate it from the hydrogen in water. NASA is also working on developing techniques to regenerate oxygen from atmospheric byproducts, such as the carbon dioxide we exhale while breathing.
Producing energy is probably the technological aspect of starting a colony that we are best prepared for thanks to photo-voltaic solar panels. But depending on the location of the colony planet, we may need to improve this technology much further. At Earth distance, we can obtain about 470W of electric power for each square metre of solar cells. This value is lower on the surface of Mars because it is 50% further from the sun than Earth and has a thick atmosphere that partially shields the sunlight.
In fact, Mars’s atmosphere is subject to periodic sand storms, which are notoriously problematic as the sand further limits the amount of received light and can also collect on and cover the panels. But we have already started to deal with these issues in the design of our current rover missions to Mars. For example, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity were designed to last about 90 days but after more than 12 years, they are still operational. And we’ve discovered that Martian wind periodically cleans the dust from the panels.
A colony needs to be self-sustained so – without a Star Trek-style replicator– farming will be essential for producing food. Crops can also be used to convert carbon dioxide in the air back into breathable oxygen. Growing plants on Earth is relatively easy because the environment is what they have been adapting to for thousands of years, but growing fruits and vegetables in space or in another planet is not as simple.
Temperature, pressure, humidity, carbon dioxide levels, composition of soil and gravity all affect the survival and growth of plants, with different effects on different species. Several studies and experiments are currently ongoing to try to grow plants in controlled chambersthat mimic the environment of a space colony. One potential solution that has already been proven on Earth with radishes, lettuces and green onions is hydroponic farming, which involves growing plants in a nutrient-enriched fluid without any soil.
The final requirement for a space colony will be keeping the climate habitable. Atmospheric composition and climate on other celestial bodies are very different to Earth’s. There is no atmosphere on the moon or asteroids, and on Mars the atmosphere is made mainly of carbon dioxide, producing surface temperatures of 20°C down to -153°C during winter at the poles, and an air pressure just 0.6% of Earth’s. In such prohibitive conditions, settlers will be limited to living inside the isolated habitats and strolls outside will only be possible using spacesuits.
One alternative solution may be to change the planet’s climate on a large scale. We’re already studying such “geo-engineering” as a way to respond to Earth’s climate change. This would require huge effort but similar techniques could be scaled and applied for example to other planets such as Mars.
Possible methods include bioengineering organisms to convert carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to oxygen, or darkening the Martian polar caps to reduce the amount of sunlight they reflect and increase the surface temperature. Alternatively, a large formation of orbiting solar mirrors could reflect the light of the sun on specific regions such as the poles to cause a local increase in temperature. Some have speculated that such relatively small temperature changes could trigger the climate to take on a new state with much higher air pressure, which could be the first step towards terraforming Mars.
Eight days from now a 100-foot-diameter asteroid named "2013 TX68" will fly past Earth for the second time in recorded history.
One hundred feet is about the size of a blue whale, but to be clear, 2013 TX68 is not considered a potentially hazardous asteroid and poses no catastrophic threat to human life on Earth.
Still, NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has had its eye on this space rock since it was discovered in 2013.
The NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey first spotted 2013 TX68 on Oct. 6, 2013 while it was passing at a distance of 1.3 million miles away.
Now, according to the latest updates on the asteroid's location and orbit, the CNEOS has estimated that "2013 TX68" will fly past Earth on March 8 at a safe distance of 3 million miles away.
That's a distance of about 12.5 times farther away than the Moon is from Earth.
Unfortunately for asteroid spotters, this means that we likely won't have a chance to see the asteroid upon its closest approach.
"There is no concern whatsoever regarding this asteroid — unless you were interested in seeing it with a telescope," Paul Chodas, the manager of CNEOS, said in a press release. "Prospects for observing this asteroid, which were not very good to begin with, are now even worse because the asteroid is likely to be farther away, and therefore dimmer than previously believed."
Chodas admitted that because this asteroid is hard to spot, the data on its location is too sparse for the CNEOS to map its orbit completely. And this does leave a bit of uncertainty about exactly where the asteroid will be and when.
For instance, there's a small chance that on March 8, 2016, this asteroid could get as close to our planet as 15,000 miles away. That's still too far to do any harm, fortunately.
Even if 2013 TX68 were going to make contact with Earth, an asteroid this size poses no catastrophic threat to human life.
While it's currently the size of a blue whale, Earth's atmosphere would make quick work of the asteroid, whittling it down to a fraction of its current size.
But it could still cause some damage.
For some idea of just how much, NASA calculated what might happen if 2013 TX68 were to enter Earth's atmosphere.
It would likely generate a radiant fireball that would explode close to the surface, but before hitting the ground. Such an explosion is called an air burst, and it's the blast wave from air bursts like these that can be dangerous.
The Chelyabinsk event in 2013, for example, generated three different air bursts, the most powerful of which released the equivalent energy of 500,000 tons of TNT.
2013 TX68 is about twice the size of the asteroid that broke up over Chelyabinsk, Russia, and NASA calculated that it would release twice as much energy — or about the same as 1 million tons of TNT. But, again, the chances of this happening on March 8 are zero.
However, March 8 won't be the last time we hear of 2013 TX68. It's expected to pass by Earth three more times this century in 2017, 2046, and 2097. But the odds of an impact are slim to none.
CNEOS estimated that the odds of an impact on Sep. 28, 2017 are 1 in 250 million — you have a far better chance of dying from a lightning strike than from this asteroid. And the odds of a later impact in 2046 or 2097 are even lower.
In the mean time, CNEOS will continue to monitor the asteroid.
"I fully expect any future observations to reduce the probability even more,"Chodas said.
READ MORE: There's an unsettling reason why we know about the gigantic fireball that no one ever saw
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NOW WATCH: Scientists are bashing authorities’ claims that a meteorite killed a bus driver in India
Astronaut and Instagram star Scott Kelly is about to set a course home to Earth after spending 340 days in space, a record for a NASA astronaut.
Kelly is scheduled to undock with the International Space Station on Tuesday. Less than four hours later, he'll land in Kazakhstan.
Kelly's year in space has been a critical mission for NASA, helping to reveal details that will be key to future missions to Mars, such as how the human body reacts to long-term stays in zero gravity.
During his time in space, Kelly drank nearly 200 gallons of recycled urine and sweat and traveled over 140 million miles, according to The New York Times. Here are some more extreme numbers from The Times about Kelly's historic time in space:
SEE ALSO: The 12 most compelling scientific findings that suggest aliens are real
SpaceX is having a tough time.
Over the last week, the aerospace company founded and owned by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has suffered a series of setbacks that have led it to postpone the same launch three different times.
The root of the problem is with a new kind of fuel SpaceX began using for its rockets last December.
Now, SpaceX is trying its fourth attempt on Tuesday evening at 6:35 p.m. ET out of its launch base at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
SpaceX's mission is to launch an 11,750-pound telecommunications satellite called SES-9, built by Boeing, into orbit over Asia. Once it finally gets off the ground, the mission will be SpaceX's second launch of 15 scheduled for this year.
The main cause of SpaceX's troubles appears to center around the new fuel it began using for its upgraded Falcon 9 rockets late last year. At least two out of the three cancellations for this mission were due to issues with the fuel.
Last December, SpaceX completed a series of upgrades to its rockets, which included a taller first-stage booster, more space to carry fuel, and — as a result — an overall more powerful rocket.
Adding even more power to the mix is a new kind of fuel breathing life into the rockets. But while the new fuel, called deep cryo liquid oxygen, comes with a lot of benefits, it also has its share of drawbacks.
For one thing, deep cryo liquid oxygen is more dense than other rocket propellants, so more of it can be stored in the same amount of space in a rocket.
But there's a trade-off: It must be chilled at a frigid -340 degrees Fahrenheit and kept at that temperature until the moment the rocket launches.
And that's where SpaceX has run into a little trouble with its latest launch. Temperature-wise, the fuel is not cooperating.
During its latest attempt on Sunday, a tugboat strayed into the safety zone below the rocket's flight path. As a result, the launch was postponed for 35 minutes in time for the boat to move.
However, in that time the fuel inside the rocket warmed up, which triggered an alarm in the rocket's autonomous, computerized safety check seconds before lift off.
To be fair, it's possible that without the boat's intrusion the launch might have taken place on Sunday evening.
However, this wasn't the first time fuel interfered with this mission.
SpaceX's first launch attempt on Wednesday, Feb. 24 was also postponed because of fuel issues:
"Out of an abundance of caution, the team opted to hold launch for today to ensure liquid oxygen temperatures are as cold as possible in an effort to maximize performance of the vehicle," SpaceX stated on its webcast website.
SpaceX will try its fourth launch attempt for the SES-9 mission on Tuesday evening.
If everything goes according to plan, the company will attempt to retrieve the first stage of its rocket by landing it on a platform floating roughly 400 miles off coast in the Atlantic.
READ MORE: NASA is upping the competition on SpaceX
SEE ALSO: 9 ways Elon Musk has already upended the spaceflight industry
NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly finally comes back to Earth tonight after spending just shy of a year in space.
On March 1, his 340th day aboard the International Space Station (ISS), he'll board the small Russian Soyuz space capsule and cruise back down to the ground.
Undocking of the Soyuz from the ISS is scheduled for 8:02 p.m. ET on Tuesday, March 1 (though coverage will start sooner).
Once the capsule reaches 400,000 feet above the Earth (the ISS orbits at 249 miles) around 10:30 p.m. ET, the planet's atmosphere will be thick enough to start slowing it down.
Fifteen minutes before landing (11:10 p.m. ET), the parachutes deploy. The Soyuz will go from traveling 755 feet per second to just 5 feet per second when it lands at 11:25 p.m. ET. A quick engine burst will further slow it down when it's just 2.6 feet off the ground.
The landing is still bumpy, so crew seats have cushy, shock-absorbing liners.
Kelly is landing in the desert of Kazakhstan, so he's expected to arrive at 11:25 p.m. ET, which is mid-morning on March 2 local time.
He'll be returning with Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko, who has also been in space for a year, and Sergey Volkov, who has been on the ISS since September 2015.
You can watch the entire journey, beginning with coverage of the farewell around 4:15 p.m. ET, the undocking around 7:45 p.m. ET, and the deorbit and landing around 10:15 p.m. ET in the livestream below. You can also try this link if you have problems with that video. Or tune into channel 352 on your actual television if you have DIRECTV.
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NOW WATCH: Here's how Scott Kelly will return to Earth today — and it won't be comfortable
Right before Astronaut Scott Kelly took off to spend a year in space, President Obama told him,"Good luck Captain. Make sure to Instagram it."
And he did.
From tracking storms to catching all the colors of the Earth, here are some of the best shots from his record-breaking, year-long voyage:
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Scott Kelly has been in the ISS for almost a year now, and he's set to return on Tuesday night. His journey back will not be comfortable — reentering the atmosphere is no easy task.
Produced by Emmanuel Ocbazghi
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NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly returns to Earth Tuesday night after spending almost a year in space.
But his 340 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS) haven't been all fun and games.
Our bodies evolved on Earth, so they're not built for weightlessness — which is exactly why NASA plans to use Kelly to study the long-term effects of spaceflight the human body.
Scott's identical twin brother Mark Kelly has spent the past year on Earth, so NASA will compare Mark's changes to those that Scott experienced.
NASA's ultimate goal is to use the lessons learned from Scott Kelly's Year in Space mission to send astronauts to Mars — and soon. That journey will take about 2.5 years round-trip, so understanding spaceflight's effects on the human body will be even more important.
Here are eight biological oddities that happen to your body if you're in space for a year.
SEE ALSO: Mind-blowingly beautiful photos from Astronaut Scott Kelly's record-breaking year in space
CHECK OUT: The 12 most compelling scientific findings that suggest aliens are real
Tuesday, March 1 is an exciting day for NASA and its star astronaut Scott Kelly
At around 11:27 p.m. ET Tuesday night, Kelly is scheduled do something he hasn't done in 340 days: Walk on solid ground.
For nearly a year, Kelly has been floating in space, 249 miles above Earth's surface, on board the International Space Station (ISS).
During that time he shattered the record for the longest consecutive days spent in space by any NASA astronaut. The previous record was 215 days, held by NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría.
Kelly's return marks an important milestone in NASA's One-Year-Mission, dedicated to studying the human body's response to long-term stays in zero gravity. Once Kelly returns, scientists will thoroughly evaluate him by analyzing everything from his vision, to his physical performance, metabolism, and mental health.
Right now, Kelly is getting ready to board a Russian Soyuz capsule with his one-year-mission partner, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko.
Kornienko also spent 340 days in space, though he didn't break the cosmonaut (the word used to refer to a Russian astronaut) record for the longest stay in space. That world record of 437 days is still held by cosmonaut Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov, who achieved it in the mid-90s.
The Soyuz capsule is scheduled to undock with the ISS and begin its 3.5-hour trip back to Earth at approximately 7:45 p.m. ET Tuesday. But NASA will begin streaming live coverage of the event at 4 p.m. ET, shortly before Kelly and Kornienko officially leave the ISS for the Soyuz and close the ISS hatch behind them.
People often wonder what it's like to go to space, but if you've ever wondered what it's like to return from space, this is your chance. Plus, you'll be seeing history in the making! Here's a breakdown of the major events:
| 4:00 - 7:30 p.m. ET | Farewell and hatch closure coverage |
| 8:02 p.m. ET | Soyuz undocks with the ISS |
| 10:32 p.m. ET | Soyuz burns its engines to prep for re-entry |
| 11:27 p.m. ET | Landing near Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan |
You can watch it all on NASA TV, or on the livestream below:
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NOW WATCH: Here's how Scott Kelly will return to Earth today — and it won't be comfortable
Scott Kelly returns to Earth later today, after spending 340 consecutive days in orbit (the most of any American).
Over the coming months, NASA scientists will continue to analyze the countless vials of blood, swabs of DNA, and various body scans that Kelly and his twin brother Mark have provided this past year.
While Kelly’s year in space is plenty enough to warrant a study of the physiological functioning of every organ in his body, the fact that NASA has been able to simultaneously study his twin brother makes the study that much more powerful.
Twins present scientists with a unique opportunity.
In fact, they are in such high demand by scientists that an annual twins fair is held in Twinsburg, Ohio, where scientists set up booths hoping to attract twins to their studies.
When scientists first started studying twins, they relied on the basic premise that twins shared either some or all of the same genes, and were raised in similar environments.
They often used twins to study the health effects of certain habits, like smoking or dietary habits, or to see if a certain treatment worked well.
For example, back in the 1970s, Linus Pauling theorized that vitamin C could effectively cure the common cold. To test out the idea, researchers recruited sets of identical twins and for 100 days had one twin take a vitamin C supplement and the other take a placebo. In the end, they either both ended up getting colds or neither of them got sick, disproving Pauling’s theory.
But in recent years, twins have been providing even more powerful data. Identical twins, also called monozygotes, have exactly the same genes. But as they grow, identical twins, while they still often look strikingly the same, can develop subtle differences: One twin grows a few inches taller than the other, or one twin has a distinctively different weight or facial feature that makes it easy to distinguish from the other twin. But because they share the exact same genome, scientists attribute these differences to the environment. So by studying identical twins, researchers can know with more certainty how the environment interacts with our genes and affects our health and how we look--a concept known as epigenetics. The basic idea behind studying identical twins is that the results can better determine whether a certain trait, illness, or disorder is influenced more heavily by genetics or by the environment.
While the environment has only small effects on certain traits like height, epigenetics has been found to strongly influence many kinds of cancer, autoimmune diseases, and psychiatric disorders. By following identical twins over long periods of time, researchers can find out which genes and which environmental factors together may cause a certain disease to arise.
For NASA, this change in environment is crucial. As identical twins, Scott and Mark Kelly share exactly the same genes, but for the past year, their environments have been completely different. Scott has spent the past year in a very atypical, microgravity environment, while Mark has spent it in a much more natural environment here on Earth. All the while, NASA has been running almost every medical test they can on both of them. So when they analyze the results, they will attempt to better understand the effects that long term space travel has on the human body.
With an exact genetic replica to compare the results to, the researchers can be more certain whether it was the environment or the genes that are causing these differences.
Non-identical twins, also known as fraternal twins, are important, too. Just like any siblings, they share 50 percent of the same genes but they are also the same exact age, so studying them is better than studying say a sibling because age can be take out of the equation. However, some of the most powerful twin studies actually study both identical and non-identical twins in the same situation. If both identical twins and non-identical twins are just as likely to have a certain trait or disease, the chance that that trait is influenced solely by genetics is much less.
In NASA’s case, the study size is as small as it gets when it comes to twin studies, with just one pair, and they don’t have any non-identical twins to compare them to. Further, there are some other variables that need to be taken into account; the Kelly twins didn’t eat the same food all year and food is known to influence the gut microbiome, which NASA is studying.
However NASA's twin study is a first-of-its-kind study and will hopefully guide scientists to find out how Scott Kelly's genes have been influenced by his year in space, and could ultimately make spaceflight safer.
This article originally appeared on Popular Science.
SEE ALSO: Something strange is happening with American births that started 30 years ago
CHECK OUT: Scientists discovered what happens when one twin exercises and the other does not
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NOW WATCH: Here's how Scott Kelly will return to Earth today — and it won't be comfortable
Some 100 to 400 billion stars exist in the Milky Way galaxy. And with potentially thousands of times more planets around those stars, many astronomers think it's a given that intelligent alien civilizations are out there — some of which are trying to communicate with us.
But so far we haven't found a shred of evidence of anyone or anything to confirm our suspicions.
That's not to surprising, though. All of those billions and billions stars and planets make for a mind-bogglingly large turf to point humanity's telescopes.
Today, however, researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Germany and McMaster University in Ontario announced a new strategy that may vastly narrow the hunt for extraterrestrial life: Ignore all of the places where aliens can't easily detect the Earth.
"The key point of this strategy is that it confines the search area to a very small part of the sky," René Heller, an astrophysicist Max Planck Institute, said in a press release.
When Earth orbits the sun, it dims the light radiating off the star a tiny bit.
Called a transit, the phenomenon is akin to casting our shadow out into the universe like a beacon.
Now if you paint Earth's transit shadow across the entire sky over the course of a year, you get Earth's transit zone:
This thin strip — roughly 0.2% the size of the entire night sky — is where Heller and his colleagues think we should look and listen.
The reason is that transits are one of the best ways to find exoplanets and, in some cases, it also allows astronomers to sample light that passes through a distant atmosphere.
For example, astronomers studied a Neptune-size exoplanet about 120 light-years from Earth very closely and detected water vapor there.
Now reverse that.
If aliens are indeed looking for us — as we are for them — they're probably trying to detect a very dim transit (like the Earth's) and parse out what's in our atmosphere. And if their instruments are good enough, they might find water, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen, plus gases like oxygen and methane, which are strong signs of biological life.
Instead of scanning the whole sky, astronomers might need only focus on that narrow band, which is roughly one-quarter of the diameter of the sun, or two-thousandths of the whole sky.
According to the release, this limits the number of stars to watch to about 100,000 (instead of billions).
"They may have detected Earth's biogenic atmosphere and started to contact whoever is home," Heller said in the release.
The European Space Agency's Planetary Transits and Oscillation of stars mission (PLATO), set to launch in 2024, will search for and study Earth-sized planets in distant solar systems (as well as any seismic activity on their host suns).
"PLATO might even detect the transits of exoplanets, whose possible inhabitants would be able to see the Earth transiting the Sun," Heller said in the release. "Such a crazy setup would offer both them and us the possibility of studying each other's planets with the transit method."
We've asked Heller and his colleagues for more details on their idea, but haven't heard back yet. We'll update this post if and when we do.
[h/t @coreyspowell]
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NOW WATCH: 40 years ago, NASA sent a message to aliens — here's what it says
Due to high altitude winds, Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX will postpone its second launch of the year for this Friday.
"Pushing launch to Friday due to extreme high altitude wind shear. Hits like a sledgehammer when going up supersonic," Musk Tweeted.
This is the fourth time in one week — since last Wednesday — that SpaceX has postponed its mission to launch the Boeing-made SES-9 satellite into space.
Cancellations aren't necessarily a sign that anything is wrong. And as of Sunday, the Falcon 9 rocket was reportedly in good health.
SpaceX is simply being extra careful to make sure everything goes smoothly once the rocket lifts off the ground.
The reason this launch has garnered such attention is because of an attempted rocket landing that will swiftly follow the launch.
SpaceX has been trying for over a year now to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rockets onto an ocean platform. The attempt scheduled to take place after Friday's launch will be SpaceX's fourth try for success.
Despite the fact that SpaceX has stated that it has low expectations of success, these rocket landings are a novelty of 21st century spaceflight and worth getting excited about.
READ MORE: NASA is upping the competition on SpaceX
SEE ALSO: 9 ways Elon Musk has already upended the spaceflight industry
Scott Kelly holds the record for the longest consecutive time an American has spent in space at 340 days.
His Year in Space mission ends when he returns to Earth March 1, 2016.
But Kelly's trip is only the fourth-longest in history.
In short, Russian (and Soviet Union) cosmonauts totally kick our butts when it comes to long-duration spaceflight per person.
Check out how Kelly stacks up:
Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov holds the all-time record at 437.7 days, which he completed almost two decades ago.
History reveals why cosmonauts have all the glory.
While NASA was busy sending astronauts to the moon, the USSR launched the world's first space station, Salyut 1, in 1971. They launched seven iterations of Salyut before putting the Mir station into orbit in 1986.
Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was in space so long that his country was the USSR when he left and Russia when he came back.
He went to space in May 1991; the Soviet Union dissolved in December, and Krikalev came back to Earth in March 1992.
The US launched Skylab, its first space station, in 1973. It remained in orbit until 1979.
And in 2000, the International Space Station (ISS) became the world's orbital outpost.
Since then, 221 people from 18 different countries have spent time in space aboard the ISS. And together they've performed almost 200 spacewalks, and conducted countless science experiments.
NASA's ultimate goal is to use the lessons learned from ISS missions like Scott Kelly's Year in Space to send astronauts to Mars — and soon. That journey will take about 2.5 years round-trip, so understanding spaceflight's effects on the human body will be even more important.
Humans have been in space since USSR cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin first orbited the Earth in 1961. And that was just the beginning.
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NOW WATCH: Here's how Scott Kelly will return to Earth today — and it won't be comfortable
If all goes as planned, Commander Scott Kelly will be back on Earth Tuesday, but his mission is far from over.
After he lands in Kazakhstan, researchers are going to be swarming Kelly like biology students with their first lab rat.
A key goal of Kelly’s mission has been to identify the physiological and biochemical effects of prolonged space flight so NASA can figure out what crews might experience en route to Mars, which would be a 30-month mission.
During his American-record-setting 340 consecutive days in orbit, Kelly has collected his blood and urine for scientists to analyze, and conducted experiments on his physiology, cognition, and more.
But NASA isn’t done with him.
Once he’s back, researchers will keep studying him to see whether a year in space has made him farsighted or stupid, among other things.
Here are some of the health effects that scientists will be monitoring Kelly for:
In microgravity, blood and other fluids float toward the head. That can cause pressure on the back of the eye and harm vision. One astronaut reportedly couldn’t read the reentry checklist, and more than 30 percent of US astronauts have experienced changes in their eyes after months-long stays on the space station. So many become farsighted, in fact, that the space station keeps a supply of eyeglasses.
During his mission Kelly has measured how fluid distribution in his body has changed (using ultrasound and other noninvasive techniques); once he’s back, scientists plan to look for “tortuosity and kinking” in Kelly’s optic nerve, according to Japanese astronaut Dr. Chiaki Mukai, who is leading a vision study for NASA. She’ll measure him again 10, 30, and 180 days after he lands to see if any changes reverse.
Astronauts’ redistribution of body fluids can also increase cranial pressure enough to affect the brain, scientists suspect; some returning astronauts have had trouble walking a straight line and turning corners cleanly. NASA’s Jacob Bloomberg will test for such “postflight changes in functional performance,” including sensory and motor skills and muscle physiology, by testing Kelly up to 30 days after he lands.
Kelly has also been undergoing testing for fine motor control, memory, perception, reaction speed, and other brain functions as part of a study by Dr. Mathias Basner of the University of Pennsylvania to quantify the mental fuzziness or “space fog” that many astronauts complain about. He’ll continue those tests for three months after he lands. Can he click on smaller and smaller squares on a computer screen? Remember 10 three-dimensional shapes (for instance, a rectangle floating in one corner of a transparent box) for several minutes? Recall which fractal, in a sequence popping up on a computer screen, appeared two before the current one?
Kelly told Air & Space magazine that postmission “you feel bad for a month, and I’ve never felt completely normal” after his earlier space sojourns. The woes include bone loss and muscle wasting (both the result of less gravity pulling on those tissues), headaches (that fluid redistribution thing again), and poor sleep (a space station average of 6.1 hours per 24). The station’s old exercise equipment didn’t provide enough resistance to prevent muscle atrophy, deterioration of heart function, and bone loss, but a new treadmill and resistance machine have allowed astronauts to run faster and do resistance exercises at heavier loads. Scientists will evaluate if that reduced Kelly’s loss of muscle, bone, and cardiovascular functions. He’s got at least another month of tests once he’s back on Earth.
Scott Kelly’s twin, Mark, is a retired astronaut, so scientists will compare the brothers to see how Scott’s DNA, proteins, gut microbes, immune system, and cognitive performance changed relative to Mark’s. Kelly has been a virtual pincushion during his flight, with blood draws (and urine and saliva samples) that will be analyzed for clues to his levels of stress hormones, his immune system function, even the length of his telomeres (sections of chromosomes that have something to do with aging). Many of those measurements, which will continue for years in some cases, will be compared to Mark’s so scientists can subtract out normal aging changes from what 340 days in space does to a body.
Experimental testing to evaluate whether a year in space affected the structure and function of Kelly’s arteries will have him undergoing ultrasounds through 2021.
Kelly and other space stationeers have been swabbing their noses, mouths, and skin, and collecting fecal samples, to see how their collection of bacteria, viruses, and other (mostly harmless) microbes changed in microgravity. That’s important because the booming field of microbiome research suggests that the kind and quantity of bugs in the microbiome affect metabolism, immune function, and other systems that need to be firing on all cylinders during a Mars mission.
Biologist Hernan Lorenzi of the J. Craig Venter Institute, who leads the microbiome study, has already discovered that some gut bacteria become more abundant and some less, while nose microbes decrease (probably because of the clean filtered air aboard the station). Kelly can look forward to six months of additional sampling.
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NOW WATCH: Here's how Scott Kelly will return to Earth today — and it won't be comfortable
After reaching the International Space Station last year on March 27, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly embarked on a mission that has pushed the boundaries of American spaceflight.
And on Tuesday evening at about 11:26 p.m. ET, part of that mission came to an end.
After spending 340 days in space — longer than any American before him — Kelly arrived back on Earth safely, packed inside a snug Soyuz capsule with cosmonauts Sergey Aleksandrovich Volkov and Mikhail Korniyenko, who also just completed 340 days in space.
Kelly's trip back to solid ground marks an end to his epic life in space.
Now, the real work begins.
Sending an astronaut into space to live for nearly a year on the ISS is one of the most ambitious missions NASA has launched in its efforts to eventually send humans to Mars.
But there are many questions that need answering before NASA is ready for the red planet.
Now that Kelly is back on Earth, scientists can begin to answer some of those questions. They'll start by analyzing, in detail, how Kelly's 340-day stay in space has affected his body.
Unfortunately for humans, one of the most entertaining aspects about space is also the most harmful to the human body: microgravity.
Somersaulting in midair looks like great fun, but over time microgravity has a bizarre and potentially dangerous impact on physical performance.
For example, astronauts in the past have experienced impaired vision, changes in their sense of taste, and an increased flow of fluid to the brain.
Increased fluid flow to the brain is particularly concerning, because when astronauts return to Earth their blood pressure must readjust to Earth's gravity. But this takes time, and as a result some recently arrived astronauts can't stand up for more than 10 minutes without fainting.
Other concerns about prolonged spaceflight include a loss of bone and muscle mass, a weakened immune system, and fatigue.
Kelly conducted numerous experiments during his time in space to help address these concerns, but now that he's back scientists can get a closer look at him.
They'll also observe how quickly he recovers. Recovery rate is important in predicting how much future astronauts — who land on Mars for brief periods — will be capable of doing, both physically and mentally, after spending 8 1/2 months in space, about the time it takes to get to Mars.
After 340 days, 10,944 sunsets and sunrises, and over 143 million miles traveled aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Scott Kelly has finally come home.
His ride — a Russian space capsule called Soyuz TMA-18M — touched down in the middle of the desert-like steppes of Kazakhstan on Tuesday, March 1 at 11:26 p.m. ET.
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It was right on schedule and hit the "bullseye" of the landing zone, NASA says.
Ground crews fought off members of the press to pull Kelly and his two crewmates, cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov, out of the Soyuz' 6,400-pound descent module.
From there, workers laid the men on chairs as doctors poked and prodded them for health readings.
There's always a chance something can go (terribly) wrong during a spacecraft landing, but Tuesday night's went right by the book.
The gumdrop-shaped capsule undocked from the ISS at 8:02 p.m. ET, starting an approximately three-hour descent.
A couple hours after undocking, the capsule fired its thrusters to fall out of orbit. When it reached 400,000 feet above the Earth (the ISS orbits at 249 miles), the planet's atmosphere drastically slowed down the Soyuz — from about 17,250 mph to less than 600 mph.
Around 11:10 p.m. ET, the parachutes deployed and further reduced the Soyuz's speed from about 515 mph to roughly 7 mph:
A quick engine burst then safely landed the capsule in a cloud of dust at 11:26 p.m. ET.
Still, those landings on solid ground are never gentle.
"I threw up two or three times" after landing, said Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield on a live Periscope feed, describing his previous experience in a Soyuz descent module.
But "there's nothing quite like that first breath of fresh air," Hadfield said.
Kelly certainly seemed happy to be on the ground as doctors tended to him:
Kelly's Year in Space mission should get us one step closer to sending humans to Mars.
NASA will compare what happened to him in space with his identical twin, Mark Kelly, who was on Earth the whole time.
Humans weren't built to live in space, so it wreaks havoc on our bodies. Microgravity breaks down our bones and tissues, and space radiation can increase our cancer risk.
In addition to collecting his own blood and saliva samples during his year in space, Kelly conducted a number of experiments— like growing lettuce and flowers in zero-gravity.
During his highly publicized mission, Kelly also did an incredible amount of public outreach.
He posted 1,000 photos to Twitter and Instagram, hosted a Reddit AMA, and hosted discussions with students and reporters about what it's like to live in space.
But he wasn't the only one in space for the last year. Russian cosmonaut Kornienko had been aboard the ISS for the entire time, too.
Kornienko, Kelly, and Volkov, a cosmonaut aboard the space station since September 2015, all returned to Earth together Tuesday night.
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Kelly will undergo many tests over the coming days and weeks to test how his body changed in space, including ones the minute he gets out of the Soyuz capsule. NASA will also compare those results to his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly.
Hopefully his results can help NASA figure out how to develop better treatments, preventative care, and spacecraft so that humans can go on long-term missions.
Today, the space station. Tomorrow, Mars.
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NOW WATCH: Watch astronaut Scott Kelly land on Earth after spending almost a year in space
