Yesterday NASA’s Juno space probe completed its first Jupiter flyby. At approximately 13:44 UTC it flew just 4,200 kilometers (2,600 miles) above the Jovian clouds, the minimum distance scheduled throughout its primary mission. At that point, Juno was traveling at about 208,000 km/h (130,000 mph) compared to the planet. This is the first of 36 flybys planned in the two and a half years of its primary mission.
Yesterday ESO held a press conference to announce that probably they discovered an exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the solar system. A team of astronomers led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé from Queen Mary University of London found what was called Proxima b, a planet a little more massive than the Earth orbiting in the habitable zone of its star.
An article published in the journal “Geology” describes the study of the remains of a system of ancient riverbeds in the region of the planet Mars called Arabia Terra. A team of scientists led by Joel Davis of the University College London analyzed high-resolution photographs taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) space probe to find traces of rivers that flowed nearly 4 billion years ago. This is another confirmation of the fact that at that time the climate on Mars was warm and wet, similar to the Earth.
An article accepted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes a research on the exoplanet GJ 1132b, taken as an example of a rocky planet orbiting close to a red dwarf star. A team of astronomers led by Laura Schaefer of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) used computer models to simulate the evolution of that type of planet’s atmosphere concluding that could be thin and contain oxygen.
An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series” describes a research on brown dwarfs, objects on the border between stars and planets. A team of researchers led by Jacqueline Fahery of the Carnegie Institution examined the characteristics of 152 young brown dwarfs and concluded that their atmospheres’ properties might be the behind their differences.
