The NASA will begin the search of extraterrestrial life in exoplanetas of the Solar System
The NASA will put this week in march his first mission with capacity to respond to the question that shakes to the Man from the dawn of the knowledge: There is life beyond the Earth. The scientists have discarded all possibility that virtually some type of biological activity exists like which we know in the Earth.
Like result, the hope to find it is in exoplanetas, bodies that turn around other stars beyond the Solar System. Until now, by means of diverse systems of detection, the astronomers have confirmed the existence of more than 320 exoplanetas.
And in the beginning of that search the American space agency will send the Kepler observatory that will divide Friday in a long cosmic trip mounted in a rocket Delta II from Cabo Cane plantation, in the peninsula of Florida. This is the first mission with the capacity to find planets like the Earth, rocky planets that are in a warm zone in which the water can be maintained in its liquid form, essential element for the life formation, said the NASA in an official notice.
“Kepler is a crucial component of the efforts of the NASA to find and to study planets with characteristics similar to those of the Earth”, indicated to Jon Morse, director of astrophysics of the space agency in Washington.
According to the scientist, the planetary census that realises Kepler will help to include/understand the frequency in which those planets in the Milky Route exist. Also it will contribute in the planning of other missions that, in the future to medium term, detect directly and transmit information on the characteristics of the worlds that there are around neighboring stars.
After an intergalactic trip of 3.5 years, Kepler will initiate the search in “very small” the region of Cygnus-Lyra that contains around 100 thousand stars similar to our Sun. With its instruments, Kepler will determine the existence of exoplanetas through the changes of light that reflect their stars when they happen among them and the observatory.
Theoretically, if those bodies observed by Kepler were similar to the Earth would have to complete an orbit of around a year around their star. Once detected one of those planets, its study could be continued by the Hubble telescopes and Spitzer of the NASA, said the space agency.
Kepler will be able to study the stars of constant way during all their mission, something that cannot make other observatories, like the Hubble, added. For it the observatory will tell on two basic instruments that between most powerful they are produced until now for the scientific exploration of the space.
The telescope of Kepler can detect changes in the brightness of stars of only 20 parts per million and the images that the observatory will transmit will be caught by a camera that has a 95 resolution of megapixels.
“If Kepler observed a terrestrial town during the night from the space, he could catch a change in the intensity of the light caused by a person who happens in front of a light”, James Fanson explained, director of the project in the Laboratory of Propulsion to Chorro (JPL) of the NASA.
According to Debra Fischer, astronomer of the State University of San Francisco, once he arrives at his destiny in the next decade, the Kepler will be a basic instrument to know what type of planets turns around other stars.
Source: The Universal one
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