SpaceX successfully launches Japanese JCSAT-14 Satellite

US based private space transport service company, SpaceX has successfully launched Japanese JCSAT-14 communication satellite into the space. The satellite was place into its intended preliminary geostationary transfer orbit by SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, US. After meeting its primary goal of the mission, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully landed on an ocean (floating) platform, known as a drone ship, off the coast of Florida. This is for the second time in row the reusable main stage booster of Falcon 9 rocket successfully landed on offshore floating platform after the April 8, 2016 landing.
About JCSAT-14 Satellite
JCSAT-14 Satellite is owned by Sky Perfect JSAT Corporation. The satellite will boost the company’s fleet of relay stations to 17. The satellite is built by Space Systems/Loral and is equipped with 26 C-band and 18 Ku-band transponders. It has design life of 15 years and replaces the aging JCSAT-2A which is now stationed at 154 degrees East longitude. Sky Perfect JSAT Corporation is the only non-governmental provider of multi-channel pay television and satellite communications in Japan and a major communications provider across Asia and Oceania.

New Earth-Like Planet Discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope

Astronomers using NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope announced Thursday the discovery of the most Earth-like planet yet orbiting a distant star like our own sun, bringing to a dozen the number of small worlds potentially suitable for life spotted elsewhere in the galaxy.

The newly discovered planet, called Kepler-452b, is the smallest to date found orbiting in the habitable zone of a distant star—the area where the water considered essential for life could exist.

Every 385 days, the planet circles a star slightly brighter than the sun, located about 1,400 light years away in the Constellation Cygnus, the researchers said.

Interactive: From Pluto to the Sun

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Based on available data, the planet is most likely rocky, about 60% larger than Earth and about 1.5 billion years or so older, the researchers said. So far, there is no evidence that it has an atmosphere. The researchers don’t know the planet’s mass, but speculated that its gravity may be twice that on Earth.

“It is a pretty good close cousin to our Earth and our sun,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for science at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Washington, D.C. “It is the closest so far.”

The Kepler astronomers, however, have no direct evidence that the newly found planet can actually support life.

The space agency announced the find at a media briefing Thursday. A research paper reporting the conclusions has been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.

The discovery was found by analyzing data on about 150,000 stars collected by the $600 million planet-hunting space telescope before it malfunctioned two years ago.

To help confirm the finding, astronomers also conducted ground-based observations at the University of Texas’ McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas; the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona; and the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

The Kepler scientists said Thursday that they also have identified 521 new possible exoplanets, as worlds around other stars are called.

So far, the Kepler astronomers have confirmed the existence of 12 planets less than twice the size of Earth in the habitable zones of the stars they orbit.

All told, the researchers are analyzing data about 4,696 potential exoplanets and have confirmed the existence of 1,028 exoplanets of all sorts. A dozen of them appear to be between one to two times the size of Earth, and orbit in their star’s habitable zone. Of these, nine orbit stars that are similar to the sun in size and temperature, including the exoplanet announced Thursday.

“We are the breadcrumbs of the universe,” said Kepler research scientist Jeff Coughlin, from the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. “Planets like Earth do appear to be quite common.”

The WOW! signal

Aliens, are you there?

On a summer night in 1977, Jerry Ehman, a volunteer for SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, recorded the strongest hard evidence of extraterrestrial life in human history.

Ehman was scanning radio waves from deep space, as his volunteer position entailed, hoping to come across a signal that bore the hallmarks of one sent by intelligent aliens.

And on that night, he saw his measurements spike, in a big way. The signal lasted for 72 seconds, the longest period of time it could possibly be measured by the array that Ehman was using. It was unmistakable, and appeared to have originated from within the Sagittarius constellation near a star called Tau Sagittarii, 120 light years away.

Ehman wrote the words “Wow!” on the original printout of the signal, thus its being known as the “Wow! Signal.”

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If you’re wondering what the fuss is about the signal, think of it this way — the signal that was received was at precisely the right frequency that wouldn’t be interpreted as noise, and wouldn’t be intercepted along its journey.

In other words, if we were going to send a signal out into the universe to try to communicate with an alien race, that’s exactly the frequency we would use.

Despite the incredible occurrence however, all attempts to locate the signal again have failed, leading to much controversy and confusion about its origins and its meaning.

The Voynich Manuscript

History is littered with ancient languages that have been decoded, and ciphers that have been cracked, but if there is one bizarre occurrence that marks a thorn in historians’ sides, it has to be the Voynich manuscript.

Purchased by rare-book dealer Wilfrid Voynich in 1912, the text doesn’t appear particularly remarkable at first glance.

A series of paragraphs over the course of 240 pages accompanied by illustrations and diagrams, broken into what appear to be six distinct sections. The sections appear to describe different topics of herbal, astronomical, biological, cosmological, and pharmaceutical nature.

What is so remarkable about the manuscript, then? Well, It’s written in a language unknown to man, and has evaded all attempts to decipher its contents to this day.

The writing is composed of over 170,000 characters written in patterns that resemble natural language. Twenty or 30 glyphs can account for nearly the entire text, with the exception of a few stray characters that appear only once.

It was written smoothly, with no evidence of errors or corrections anywhere, and no evidence of pauses during writing, which one would expect with encoded text. Almost as to suggest that the language was natural for whoever wrote it.

Carbon dating revealed that the script was written between the years 1404 and 1438, and although theories have been offered, nobody actually knows the author of the work.

Due to the numerous failed attempts to decipher the Voynich manuscript, many have suggested that the manuscript is an elaborate hoax, and can’t actually be deciphered. But until the truth becomes known, this strange text will remain one of history’s most fascinating unsolved mysteries.