Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Astro Plans for 2013




It's that time of year when everyone is making new year resolutions, and I am no different. My goal this year for you, my readers, is to write a blog post at least once a week. So today, I thought I'd share with you some exciting events of 2013; a hint at blog posts to come.

This year is going to be just as exciting as years past for astronomy enthusiasts. NASA has many missions planned, including the launch of the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), and the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission (MAVEN). These instruments are designed to study the solar atmosphere, moon's surface, and Mars' upper atmosphere, respectively. Along with these new satellites, NASA and other agencies will continue  to support the International Space Station and science experiments being conducted there.  The ESA will also be very active in 2013, focusing on launching satellites to study the Earth as part of their Living Planet Programme. Work will continue on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and the construction of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) should be completed. Data continues to pour in from the Great Observatories Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer, along with various missions exploring our solar system. Astronomers are actively studying this information and continue to make discoveries pertaining to star, planet and galaxy evolution. The Kepler space telescope, along with ground based observatories, continue to discover new exoplanets on a weekly basis. Maybe an Earth analog will be uncovered in 2013? Towards the end of 2013, be on the lookout for comet ISON. It's expected to whiz by Earth in December, and will appear as a small dot as bright as the full moon traveling across the sky.

For more information on these events, and, of course, some basic astronomy topics explained, check back on a weekly basis!

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, space.com