A permanent village on the Moon? We may have it by the 2030s

A permanent settlement on the Moon, as envisioned by the European Space Agency. Credit: ESA/Euronews

Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 6:51 PM - The ESA makes plans for a permanent base on the Moon, astronomers detect a Jupiter twin in a distant star system, and it's looking like farewell for Philae. It's What's Up In Space!

International Lunar Village by the 2030s?

With all the talk of settling on Mars in the 2020s and 2030s, whether it's Mars One volunteers, NASA astronauts or Elon Musk, there are some that think we've been neglecting a target a bit closer to home.

Jan Woerner, the Director General of the European Space Agency, is focused on establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon, perhaps sometime in the 2030s, using the same kind of international cooperation we now see with the ISS.

Kepler-167e - Jupiter's distant twin

Astronomers are keenly interested in finding Earth 2.0, but during that search, we're turning up many other interesting worlds, and now the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University in New York has found a near twin of the planet Jupiter.

Orbiting a star roughly 1,000 light years away, named Kepler-167, this Jupiter 2.0 is roughly 90 per cent the size of Jupiter. Also, even though it orbits closer to its star, going around once every three years or so (compared to every 12 years for our solar system's largest planet), since its star is smaller and cooler than the Sun, it's actually at about the same temperature as Jupiter.

What's particularly exciting about this world?

We know that Jupiter has 67 moons (at least), with four larger ones - one of which is actually bigger than the planet Mercury. If the Kepler-167 system formed in roughly the same way as our solar system, and so far it's a fairly reasonable assumption, given that the other three planets detected there so far are likely rocky ones, Kepler-167e may have a similar collection.

The thing is, however, that astronomers have yet to actually detect an "exomoon".

Followup observations of the Kepler-167 system may give us our first such discovery, and given the curious "vacancies" in the system's habitable zone, future looks may turn up even more planets there as well.

Bye Bye, Philae

With Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is well on its way out towards the space beyond the orbit of Jupiter, ESA scientists had been listening carefully for signs that their tiny comet lander, Philae, might be awake and ready to talk and do science.

Lately, though, given the conditions on the comet, with temperatures dropping and dust from the comet's coma now settling back down to the surface, it's very unlikely they'll hear from Philae again.

"The chances for Philae to contact our team at our lander control centre are unfortunately getting close to zero," Stephan Ulamec, Philae project manager at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) said in a February 12 post on the ESA's Rosetta mission page. "We are not sending commands any more and it would be very surprising if we were to receive a signal again."

Still, a lack of response from the little robot lander isn't deterring the Rosetta team from searching for it.

"The comet’s level of activity is now decreasing, allowing Rosetta to safely and gradually reduce its distance to the comet again," Sylvain Lodiot, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft operations manager said in the blog post. "Eventually we will be able to fly in ‘bound orbits’ again, approaching to within 10–20 km – and even closer in the final stages of the mission – putting us in a position to fly above Abydos close enough to obtain dedicated high-resolution images to finally locate Philae and understand its attitude and orientation."

"Determining Philae’s location would also allow us to better understand the context of the incredible in situ measurements already collected, enabling us to extract even more valuable science from the data," said Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor. "Philae is the cherry on the cake of the Rosetta mission, and we are eager to see just where the cherry really is!"

Sources: ESA | Columbia University | ESA