NASA : Mission Manager Update: K2 in Campaign 4 .- Actualización Misión Representante: K2 en la Campaña 4

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., hemos recibido información de la Agencia Espacial NASA, sobre la cuarta campaña  de la Misión Actualizada del trabajo del Telescopio Espacial Kepler llamada : Misión K2, que se propone identificar 16,000 estrellas y sus respectivos exoplanetas localdizadss  en la Constelación Tauro, y los Cúmulos estelares de Pléyades y el cúmulo de las Hyades.

From Feb. 7 to April 24, the fourth campaign of the K2 mission will include observations of nearly 16,000 target stars and two notable open star clusters—Pleiades and Hyades.

Image Credit: 

NASA Ames and SETI Institute/F Mullally

Now in its fourth observing campaign, the Kepler spacecraft continues to operate wonderfully since beginning its new K2 mission in May 2014. Data collected for Campaigns 0, 1 and 2 have been made available to the public through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). Campaign 3 data will be processed with a scheduled delivery to MAST in June 2015.

K2 began its fourth campaign on Feb. 8. The Campaign 4 target set includes nearly 16,000 target stars, which can be searched for exoplanets and examined for an array of astrophysical phenomena. This field includes two notable open star clusters—Pleiades and Hyades, the nearest open cluster to our solar system. Both are located in the constellation of Taurus.

As expected, the team continues to make improvements in the spacecraft’s K2 operations, improving the pointing performance, conserving fuel, extending the observation periods and increasing the number of observed targets. The team currently estimates that the onboard fuel should last until at least December 2017.

Of the more than 1,000 verified planets found by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, eight are less than twice Earth-size and in their stars' habitable zone. All eight orbit stars cooler and smaller than our sun. The search continues for Earth-size habitable zone worlds around sun-like stars

Image Credit: 

NASA Ames/W Stenzel

To learn more about the K2 mission visit the Kepler Science Center website.

While data collection has concluded for the prime Kepler mission, the team continues to analyze the full four years of Kepler data. To-date the Kepler team, together with the global science community, has identified more than 4,000 candidates and verified 1,023 as exoplanets, planets that orbit other stars. For the latest Kepler exoplanet and candidate statistics, visit the NASA Exoplanet Archive.

 

At the 225^th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January 2015, the Kepler team made two noteworthy announcements:

• Dr. Fergal Mullally described the delivery of the sixth Kepler catalog, including 554 new Kepler candidate planets, bringing the total number of Kepler candidates to 4,175. He also announced eight new small, habitable zone candidates – six around sun-like stars.

• Dr. Douglas Caldwell announced eight newly validated planets – marking Kepler’s 1000^th verified exoplanet. Among these were three small planets securely in the habitable zone, two of those likely to be rocky.

Kepler visionary William Borucki inducted as a NASA Ames Research Center Fellow. Borucki is only the 12th person to receive the center’s highest honor in Ames' 75-year history.

Image Credit: 

NASA Ames/D Hart

In late February, William Borucki, visionary and science principal investigator of the Kepler mission, was inducted as a NASA Ames Research Center Fellow. The Ames program recognizes a distinguished few for their national and international reputation of scientific or engineering excellence to NASA. Borucki is only the 12th person to receive the center’s highest honor in Ames' 75-year history.

On March 25, the Kepler team was honored by the presentation of the 2015 National Air and Space Museum Trophy for current achievement at a ceremony in Washington. For a full listing of previous awardees, along with a video about Kepler's award, visit the museum’s trophy award page.

In March the team achieved another milestone—this time in the realm of data processing. Using the first uniform processing of the four-year Kepler data set, the first uniformly vetted catalog of planetary candidates and false positives was delivered to the NASA Exoplanet Archive. Since this catalog was generated by automated software, the detectability of each planet candidate can be quantified, thus enabling reliable occurrence rate calculations to be made over the full range of period and radius for the first time. The data was made available on April 1.

The following are highlights of recent research using Kepler and K2 data that have been accepted by a peer-review journal:

General John "Jack" R. Dailey (front right), director of the National Air and Space Museum, presents the 2015 Current Achievement Trophy Award to William Borucki (front left) and NASA's Kepler Mission Team.

Image Credit: 

National Air and Space Museum

Understanding The Effects Of Stellar Multiplicity On The Derived Planet Radii From Transit Surveys: Implications for Kepler, K2, and TESS (Ciardi et al., 2015) – The paper presents the effect of undetected companion stars on the measured radii of the Kepler planet candidates. On average, the planetary radii may be underestimated by as much as 50 percent.

• A Nearby M Star With Three Transiting Super-Earths Discovered By K2 (Crossfield et al., 2015) – The paper confirms the discovery of a star with three exoplanets. The first discovery of its kind using K2 data. This marks the K2 mission's third confirmed planet since it began in May 2014.
• Precise time series photometry for the Kepler-2.0 mission (Aigrain et al., 2015) – The paper presents a new method to extract precise light curves from the K2 data.
• Kepler's Third Law and the NASA's Kepler Mission (Gould et al., 2015) - This paper summarizes the mission goals, briefly explains the transit method of finding exoplanets and design of the mission, provides some key findings and describes useful education materials available at the Kepler website

Regards,
Charlie

NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
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