The European Space Agency’s Science Programme Committee has approved the Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission to move into the construction phase. They aim to launch this deep-space observatory in 2026 with the goal of “discovering and

By Tom Ward futurism.com 7-4-17

characterizing Earth-sized planets and super-Earths orbiting Sun-like stars in the habitable zone” — although it “could eventually lead to the detection of extraterrestrial life,” according to a University of Warwick press release.

The observatory will have 26 telescopes on board and will be launched 1.5 million km (932,000 miles) into space, where, according to a mission summary, it will conduct “Ultra-high precision, long (up to several years), uninterrupted photometric monitoring in the visible band of very large samples of bright (mV ≤11) stars.” This will provide unprecedented data on distant planets.
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A 14-minute digital transmission of 3,000 messages beamed toward Polaris, the North Star, by the European Space Agency’s Cebreros deep-space tracking station in Spain.

Today’s 14-minute digital transmission of 3,000 messages beamed toward Polaris, the North Star, by the European Space Agency’s Cebreros deep-space tracking station in Spain ends a year-long effort

By The Daily Galaxy 10-11-16

known as “A Simple Response to an Elemental Message,” spearheaded by Irish-born artist Paul Quast, who solicited 3,775 text-only messages from around the world in response to this question: "How will our present environmental interactions shape the future?"

"The challenge of constructing any interstellar message is trying to anticipate what you and your recipient have in common," said psychologist Douglas Vakoch, president of METI International, an organization dedicated to detecting alien intelligence.
"One thing we can guarantee is they won't be native speakers of English or Swahili or Chinese." And the same problem applies to any incoming message to Earth.

"It's very reasonable to think that we will know there's an extraterrestrial out there, that we will have a message that is distinctly artificial, but that we won't be able to decipher it," Vakoch added.
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• Satellite is now just over half-way through its five-year mission and the first batch of data has been released • The one billion stars it has located are still only one per cent of the Milky Way's estimated stellar population

Abigail Beall Mailonline 9-14-16

• Gaia's mapping effort is already unprecedented in scale, but the satellite still has several years left to run

• In the future Gaia will collect data about each star's temperature, luminosity and chemical composition

Esa has unveiled a stunning 3D map of a billion stars in our galaxy that is 1,000 times more complete than anything that previously existed.

The data for the map was collected by a space-based probe called Gaia, which has been circling the sun nearly a million miles beyond Earth's orbit since its launch in December 2013.

On its journey, the satellite has been discreetly snapping pictures of the Milky Way.

Now the European Space Agency has released the first batch of data collected by Gaia, which includes information on the brightness and position of over a billion stars. ...
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Jupiter is putting on quite a show — with both sound and light. A new Hubble image shows a stunning light show, capturing an aurora display on the largest planet in our solar system (see above).

By Ed Mazza The Huffington Post 7-1-16

Jupiter’s auroras cover areas bigger than the entire Earth, are hundreds of times more energetic and never cease, the European Space Agency said in a news release.

Unlike auroras here, which are caused by solar storms, Jupiter pulls charged particles from its surroundings, including solar winds and even the volcanos on Io, one of its moons and the most volcanically active world in the solar system.

In addition to stunning images, NASA also released unusual “sounds” from Jupiter captured by the Juno spacecraft, which will enter orbit around the planet on July 4.
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