Super Earth Planet(s)

Hmmmm...

NASA have an EPOXI mission in which they are sending a deep impact space craft to another red dwarf, GJ436, 32 light years away as it has a planet, possibly more than 1, about the size of Neptune.

Full article.

I guess the jest of this mission is to find other earth like planets. But this place is 32 light years away. So when do we find out what is there LOL... Well i hope i am reincarnated to find out. Isn't this a little daft? i mean, 32 light years away.

So, at Mach 25, for example, it would take that craft 40, 000 years to travel ONE light year!!! Why bother? I reckon in a hundred years or sooner we will be able to travel a lot faster so why spend all that money? Yeahhh so we can explore Hartley 2. So that would mean at Mach 25 it would take approximately 1.28 million years. I DON'T want to still be on pension when this happens!!

Why not use that money in a better way? How? Hell i don't know - there are so many ideas - choose one. If it could get there in 5 or ten years, a different stroty all together. But i recon if it doesn't make it in 100 years it will be forgotten about LOL

[edit on 6/6/2008 by shearder]

NASA is not sending a probe to GJ436, just looking at it from WITHIN our solar system using an existing space probe that is already floating around out there.

EPOXI is simply a mission that is using the already-deployed "Deep Impact" space probe . This is the probe that visited comet Tempel 1 a couple of years ago and shot the comet with a projectile. The EPOXI team will use this existing spacecraft to view star GJ436 continuously for several weeks to try to detect a planet "transiting" that star. Obviously Earth-bound telescopes cannot easily (if at all) view a star continuously for 24 hours a day/7 days a week for several weeks. Therefore they are using the spacecraft from the Deep Impact Mission to do so.

NASA is getting the most of its money from that spacecraft. It visited comet Tempel 1 in 2005 (and impacted that comet with a projectile), right now it is being used to search for Extrasolar Planets, and in 2010 it may visit another comet -- comet Hartley 2.

...and it's doing all of this from the friendly confines of our little solar system.

[edit on 6/6/2008 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


You are right i didn't read it properly!! I should read these things when i am not in the office and give it more time to register LOL

Thanks for the clarity SGIP!