NASA https://www.nasa.gov/ has joined hands with the private sector billionaires
to boosts America’s presence in space. While space exploration began in 1960s,
America has taken giant strides to always be in the news. Be it sending man to
the moon or sending rockets to Mars, Jupiter and beyond.
Meanwhile, NASA has discovered 10 new planets where life can
thrive. These planets are similar to Earth. These are one of the most profound
and unprecedented discoveries of all history.
NASA has signed contracts with SpaceX and Boeing to send
astronauts to space in 2019, as soon as the latest capsules are in place.
Though unable to send astronauts to space since 2011,
because of the decommissioning of the space shuttle program. This led the
world's space agencies to buy seats aboard Russia's Soyuz spaceships.
There are plenty of reasons why, we are close to discovering
life in space. The discovery of hydrogen on the moon of Saturn Enceladus and
the promising results of the Hubble Space Telescope in its analysis of methane
oceans of the Europa moon on Jupiter and the results of the Curiosity rover on
the Red Planet.
Space Research is no simple task. It is an amalgamation of
biology, helio-physics, Earth Sciences, astronomy, planetary sciences and the
astrophysics. It takes researchers from multiple field to combine their
expertise and knowledge to make space exploration a success.
Americans are gung ho about the recent successes.
Americans have expressed their opinions about space
research:
• 63% said
that monitoring Earth's climate should be a top NASA priority
• 62% think
monitoring asteroids that might collide with Earth must be a top priority.
• 47% think
that conducting scientific research to understand space should be a top
priority.
• 41% think
that developing technologies for space exploration should be a top priority.
• 38% think
that research on how space affects human health should be studied.
• 34% think
mining in space is vital.
• 31
percent think that searching for life and planets that could support life is
crucial.
• 18% think
sending astronauts to Mars is a top priority.
• 13%
believe sending astronauts to the moon is a must.
There are some critics too:
• 25% said
that exploring Earth's climate is important and 11% doesn’t feel so.
• 45% think
sending astronauts to Mars is important and 37% think there is no need.
• 42% think
that it should be a lower priority and 44% think it should be avoided
completely.
For many decades now, NASA missions have been carrying out
profound transformation of our understanding of the planets around other stars,
or exoplanets. Now, with NASA missions like the Kepler and Spitzer space
telescopes, we have discovered more than 3,400 exoplanets, and there are
billions more waiting to be discovered only in our galaxy.
On February, the Spitzer team announced the discovery of
seven worlds the size of Earth, the largest number ever found around a single
star, called TRAPPIST-1, and three of them are firmly seated in the habitable
zone, the area around their star in which a rocky planet can hold liquid water.
Since the observations and the follow-up of these findings are at an early
stage, and the fact that new discoveries are made every week, I can say that
the best is yet to come".
Future missions
For the Associate Administrator of NASA, the Spitzer, Hubble
and Kepler telescopes will continue to help astronomers when they start using
the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be launched in 2018: "With a
much greater sensitivity, the James Webb will be able to detect the chemical
footprints of water, methane, oxygen, ozone and other components of planetary
atmospheres, and also analyze the temperatures and surface pressures of these
planets, key factors in determining their habitability. "
"Next year," Zurbuchen said, "the Transiting
Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission will also be launched, which will
study the entire sky in search of nearby planets, and in mid-2020 we will also
launch the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which will get direct
images of the exoplanets and study their atmospheric chemistry using the light
they reflect from their stars. "
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