Russia in rocket launches for first time

Jav XXXDuring the last half century the United States may have achieved flashier goals, with the Apollo Moon landings, and produced the most capable spacecraft in the form of the space shuttle. But even as the glory of Sputnik and Gagarin faded, the Russians have plugged along with their decades-old, capable rocket technology. And because of this reliability and relatively low costs, the Russians have continually launched more rockets into space than any other country.

Until now. According to data collected by The Moscow Times, Russia is expected to finish 2017 with just 18 rocket launches into space, compared to China's 19 and 20 from the United States. The US tally will be led by the United Launch Alliance, which is expected to have a dozen launches by the end of the year. The American total would be higher still if SpaceX returns to flight from a September accident by the end of the year.

The Russian newspaper cites several reasons for the country's decline from a peak of 100 launches during the USSR's prime, including declining space budgets, cost competition from providers like SpaceX for the commercial launch market, and recent problems with its heretofore reliable Proton launch vehicle.

The gap should only widen in the coming years. Before its accident in September, SpaceX was moving toward a schedule of one or more launches per month, matching or possibly exceeding the cadence of its US-based competitor United Launch Alliance. Blue Origin, too, could join their ranks as early as 2019, potentially fulfilling the promise of capitalism—that private sector rocketry can offer a cheaper, better alternative to a government-led launch model.


A potentially Earth-like planet circles a bright star 150 light-years away, casting a shadow tracked from space — and now from Earth, too.

The planet, called K2-3d, was originally seen crossing in front of its star by NASA's Kepler space telescope during that instrument's ongoing K2 mission. Researchers brought the Okayama Astrophysical Observatory's 188-centimeter (6 feet) telescope to bear on the speck to fine-tune their understanding of the exoplanet's orbit down to a precision of 18 seconds, according to new research.
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Using this first-ever Earth-based measurement of the planet, the researchers predicted when the planet will cross its star in 2018, when the newly complete James Webb Space Telescope should be able to watch carefully and analyze the planet's atmosphere for potential signs of life or habitability. [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]

K2-3d is about 1.5 times the size of Earth and orbits a star half the size of the sun every 45 days. The exoplanet circles closer to its star than Earth does around the sun — one-fifth the Earth-sun distance — but because this is a cooler star, the planet should rest at an Earth-like temperature that could host liquid water, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan researchers said in a statement. That space around a given star is known as the habitable zone because it has the potential to support life similar to that found on Earth.

Kepler discovered the planet based on the star's slight dimming as the planet passed in front, from the telescope's perspective — a process of discovery called the transit method. Because Kepler's K2 mission examines patches of the sky for only around 80 days each, researchers could observe K2-3d crossing the star just twice. But the planet is closer to Earth and has a brighter host star than most of the other potentially habitable planets discovered by Kepler, researchers said in the statement, so K2-3d was worth a second glance. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope observed two more transits, further increasing what researchers knew about the planet's orbit Jav Uncensored