Earth-sized moons may orbit around ‘hot Jupiters’

October 7th, 2009 LONDON - An enormous ring around Saturn - by far the largest of the giant planet's many rings - has been discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The new belt lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system, with an orbit tilted 27 degrees from the main ring plane.

September 29th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Taking the help of a telescope in Florida, astronomers have pinned down the extravagantly unusual orbit of HD 80606b, a Jupiter-sized planet nearly 200 light years away, which eclipsed its host star. The astronomers made observations of the planet eclipsing its star from a 41-year-old telescope at the department's Rosemary Hill Observatory 30 miles west of Gainesville in Bronson.

September 23rd, 2009 BANGALORE - India Wednesday successfully injected a cluster of six European micro-satellites into low-earth orbit after deploying its 960 kg remote sensing satellite Oceansat-2 in the polar sun-synchronous orbit. This is the second time India's space agency launched multiple satellites - it deployed on the polar orbit a record 10 satellites, including eight international nano-satellites, on April 28, 2008.

September 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new study, scientists have found that auroral bright spots on the planet Jupiter are caused by the magnetosphere of its innermost moon - Ganymede. As Ganymede and Io orbit Jupiter, they interact with regions of plasma and generate electromagnetic waves that are projected along Jupiter's magnetic field lines towards Jupiter's poles where they cause auroral bright spots.

September 14th, 2009 LONDON - Scientists, using the Cassini spacecraft's Magnetospheric Imaging instrument (MIMI), have detected a new, temporary radiation belt at Saturn, located around the orbit of its moon Dione at about 377,000 km from the centre of the planet. Radiation belts, like Earth's Van Allen belts, have been discovered at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

September 9th, 2009 LONDON - In a new report, a panel of experts have suggested that humans could orbit Mars in the 2020s, provided NASA's budget is boosted. According to an article in the New Scientist, at its current funding level, the agency will be unable to leave low-Earth orbit for at least the next two decades, according to a summary of the panel's report.

August 8th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Astronauts in the future may not worry if their rocket runs out of fuel, as they would be able to gas up at orbital gas stations floating in space, an idea which is finding favor with a group of scientists. According to a report in Discovery News, the idea of orbital gas stations has been put forward by members of a presidential panel assessing options for NASA, in respect to sticking plans for a base on the moon or heading straight to Mars.

July 30th, 2009 DUBAI - The DubaiSat-1, the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) first earth observation satellite launched early Thursday morning from Kazakhstan, has reached its desired position in the earth's orbit, WAM news agency reported. The 'eye in the sky' satellite has achieved optimal position in orbit around the earth and has successfully connected with the Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) earth observation station in Dubai, the report said, quoting officials.

July 4th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The detectors of Planck space observatory's High Frequency Instrument have reached their amazingly low operational temperature of -273.05 degrees Celsius, making them the coldest known objects in space. Planck is equipped with a passive cooling system that brings its temperature down to about -230 degree C by radiating heat into space.

June 23rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has successfully entered orbit around the moon after a four and a half day journey from the Earth. Engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, confirmed the spacecraft's lunar orbit insertion at 6:27 a.m.

June 21st, 2009 LONDON - Humans are not the only ones cribbing over weight issues, some planets too go through a "fat" stage that swells their waistlines temporarily. "Astronomers have found a lot of planets whose sizes cannot be explained by standard theory," says Laurent Ibgui of Princeton University.

June 18th, 2009 London, June 18 (ANI): A new study, with an analysis of more than 100 years of observations, has suggested that the Jupiter's moon Io, which is the solar system's most volcanically active body, will one day become dormant. Io, which is about the size of Earth's moon and is Jupiter's closest large satellite, is covered with lava flows and dozens of active volcanoes.

June 11th, 2009 Sydney, June 11 (ANI: In a grim scenario put forward by scientists, the gravity of Jupiter could one day pull Mercury off course, triggering a chain reaction of collisions in the Solar System. But despite the threat, there's only a 1 percent chance of this happening in the next 5 billion years, said French researchers.

June 2nd, 2009 LONDON - A new research has suggested that the Earth is moving away from the Sun because tidal interaction is making them both literally push each other away. Thanks to radar beams pinging off various solar-system bodies and to tracking of interplanetary spacecraft, the sun-Earth distance has been pegged with remarkable accuracy.

April 21st, 2009 Scientists discover a nearly Earth-sized planetHATFIELD, England — In the search for Earth-like planets, astronomers zeroed in on two places that look awfully familiar to home. One is close to the right size.