More Planets?

For the past several days, news of 4 new planets being discovered is being broadcasted. I anxiously watch and wait for some decent information to be announced, but news stations only provide you with a tickler of information that provides very basic infomation. "4 new planets have been discovered, isn't this great. Now onto other news..." What the... where's the rest of the infomation? Well, naturally I turn to our good and trusty NASA web site to get the information that the news won't to give. Maybe they made an agreement with aliens to keep the thing low key. Hmmm... Oh well.

Anyway, it turns out that one of the planets found is about the size of our Neptune. That sucker is HUGE! 10-20 times the size of earth. It's true that they don't know if it's made of rock or gas, but the idea of such a big planet circuling a star called "Gliese 436" is just exciting. (Levi, can we get a high power telescope?) Here are some sketches of what this new planet might look like.

NASA does a good job at tickling our imaginations on this site, as they even discuss the possibility of finding planets like ours that can sustain life. Oooo. possible aliens.

Robots

On June 10, 2003 at 1:58:47pm EDT NASA launched a robot named Spirit to the planet Mars. The trip to Mars is about 7 months, which will give Spirit plenty of time to learn all he can about the place. The space program can only take advantage of launching to Mars every 26 months. due to planet position. So hopefully all will go well with this mission. They believe Spirit will be able to run a series of test to look at rocks and see if it's a good place to live. While Spirit is there, he will also examine clues to any water activity.

This is so cool.