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PlanetQuest
{{more citations needed, date=March 2019 PlanetQuest is NASA's education and public outreach program centered on the science and technology of NASA's long-term search for habitable planets beyond the Solar System. Major components of the PlanetQuest outreach program include: * PlanetQuest: the Search for Another Earth, a continuously updated public news and multimedia Internet site; * The Night Sky Network, a national coalition of amateur astronomy clubs who do astronomy education and public outreach on behalf of NASA; * The Center for Astronomy Education, which provides professional development resources for instructors who teach introductory astronomy course, including a series of national “Teaching Excellence” workshops; * Informal education initiatives, including “PlanetQuest Updates” provided to more than 60 museums nationwide, and interactive multimedia kiosks. Begun in January 2002 and based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, PlanetQuest is funded by the Exoplanet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SIM PlanetQuest
The Space Interferometry Mission, or SIM, also known as SIM Lite (formerly known as SIM PlanetQuest), was a planned space telescope proposed by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in conjunction with contractor Northrop Grumman. One of the main goals of the mission was the hunt for Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of nearby stars other than the Sun. SIM was postponed several times and finally cancelled in 2010. In addition to detecting extrasolar planets, SIM would have helped astronomers construct a map of the Milky Way galaxy. Other important tasks would have included collecting data to help pinpoint stellar masses for specific types of stars, assisting in the determination of the spatial distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way and in the local group of galaxies and using the gravitational microlensing effect to measure the mass of stars. The spacecraft would have used optical interferometry to accomplish these and other scienti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), to give the U.S. space development effort a distinctly civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. NASA has since led most American space exploration, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968-1972 Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle. NASA supports the International Space Station and oversees the development of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System for the crewed lunar Artemis program, Commercial Crew spacecraft, and the planned Lunar Gateway space station. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program, which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar System
The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar System" and "solar system" structures in theinaming guidelines document. The name is commonly rendered in lower case ('solar system'), as, for example, in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' an''Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary''. is the gravity, gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. It Formation and evolution of the Solar System, formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The solar mass, vast majority (99.86%) of the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the Jupiter mass, remaining mass contained in the planet Jupiter. The four inner Solar System, inner system planets—Mercury (planet), Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars—are terrest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA and managed by the nearby California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The laboratory's primary function is the construction and operation of planetary robotic spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating the NASA Deep Space Network. Among the laboratory's major active projects are the Mars 2020 mission, which includes the ''Perseverance'' rover and the '' Ingenuity'' Mars helicopter; the Mars Science Laboratory mission, including the ''Curiosity'' rover; the InSight lander (''Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport''); the ''Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter''; the ''Juno'' spacecraft orbiting Jupiter; the ''SMAP'' satellite for earth surface s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keck Interferometer
The W. M. Keck Observatory is an astronomical observatory with two telescopes at an elevation of 4,145 meters (13,600 ft) near the summit of Mauna Kea in the U.S. state of Hawaii. Both telescopes have aperture primary mirrors, and when completed in 1993 (Keck 1) and 1996 (Keck 2) were the largest astronomical telescopes in the world. They are currently the 3rd and 4th largest. Overview With a concept first proposed in 1977, telescope designers at the University of California, Berkeley (Terry Mast) and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Jerry Nelson) had been developing the technology necessary to build a large, ground-based telescope. With a design in hand, a search for the funding began. In 1985, Howard B. Keck of the W. M. Keck Foundation gave $70 million to fund the construction of the Keck I telescope, which began in September 1985, with first light occurring on 24 November 1990 using nine of the eventual 36 segments. With construction of the first telescope well adv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Large Binocular Telescope
The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) is an optical telescope for astronomy located on Mount Graham, in the Pinaleno Mountains of southeastern Arizona, United States. It is a part of the Mount Graham International Observatory. When using both 8.4 m (330 inch) wide mirrors, with centres 14.4 m apart, the LBT has the same light-gathering ability as a 11.8 m (464 inch) wide single circular telescope and the resolution of a 22.8 m (897 inch) wide one. The LBT mirrors individually are the joint second- largest optical telescope in continental North America, next to the Hobby–Eberly Telescope in West Texas. It has the largest monolithic, or in an optical telescope. Strehl ratios of 60–90% in the infrared H band and 95% in the infrared M band have been achieved by the LBT. Project The LBT was originally named the "Columbus Project." It is a joint project of these members: the Italian astronomical community represented by the Istituto Nazionale d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terrestrial Planet Finder
The Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) was a proposed project by NASA to construct a system of space telescopes for detecting extrasolar terrestrial planets. TPF was postponed several times and finally cancelled in 2011. There were two telescope systems under consideration, the TPF-I, which had several small telescopes, and TPF-C, which used one large telescope. History In May 2002, NASA chose two TPF mission architecture concepts for further study and technology development. Each would use a different means to achieve the same goal—to block the light from a parent star in order to see its much smaller, dimmer planets. The technological challenge of imaging planets near their much brighter star has been likened to finding a firefly near the beam of a distant searchlight. Additional goals of the mission would include the characterization of the surfaces and atmospheres of newfound planets, and looking for the chemical signatures of life. The two planned architectures were: *In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
