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EuropaFeature

Republic of india just set a earth record by sending 104 satellites into infinite in a single launch. One hundred and three of them were nanosats, only they were crated beside Cartosat-2nd: a three-quarter-ton creature the Indian government is going to employ for cartography, imaging and perchance weather mapping. Ninety-six of the 103 were actually American spacecraft from a visitor called Planet, which was founded by ex-NASA scientists to "paradigm the unabridged Earth every day." Counting the 96 new ones, that brings Planet'southward constellation to 149, which is also a world tape.

The latest news on Proxima b is that scientists accept revised the odds on its habitability, probably downwards. The reason is its parent star: Proxima Centauri, a ruby-red dwarf. To telephone call a carmine dwarf's early on life trigger-happy would be an understatement of British proportion. X-ray and extreme UV (XUV) "superflares" wreak themselves upon whatever hapless planets in their paths, ionizing and driving away the lighter elements in the atmosphere: trivial stuff similar carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. Proxima Centauri is likely no exception to this rule, which means that it probably roasted Proxima b to a well-baked and drove off its atmosphere long ago.

Also, it was an extremely schmoopy week. Given that Tuesday was Valentine's mean solar day, anybody wanted to talk about the "biggest heart in the Solar System" — the huge heart-shaped basin on Pluto. It'southward probably filled with nitrogen ice, and it's brightly reflective even so far away from the lord's day. Some scientists have speculated that Pluto could play host to a subsurface ocean, a la Enceladus and Europa.

Speaking of Europa, there'due south been movement on NASA'south Europa lander. NASA'south Planetary Scientific discipline Segmentation has been neat to explore Europa for a long while, because there's a lot of bear witness that information technology has a global saltwater ocean. The latest idea is a lander probe that could detect signs of life below the icy crust. But getting at that place is, as usual, no picnic. So NASA put together a team of engineers and asked them for a "workable" listing of scientific discipline objectives and measurements. Now that team has delivered their recommendations.

nh-europa-lander-concept_0 (1)

Does this count as attempting a landing? Asking for a friend.

"Given that Europa has no temper," NASA officials explain, "the squad adult a concept that could evangelize its science payload to the icy surface without the benefit of technologies like a heat shield or parachutes." That science payload would include a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, a Raman spectrometer, a microscope, and a lidar bundle, among others (PDF). The side by side step will be to put the matter in front of the scientific community at large, which NASA intends to practice at the upcoming Lunar and Planetary Scientific discipline Conference in Texas on xix March, and and so again on 23 Apr at the Astrobiology Science Briefing in Arizona.