Kepler 16b -- World Orbiting Two Stars

One more fascinating discovery by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. “A planet named as Kepler 16b, orbiting a binary start system around 200 light-years away for us”… This is very interesting as the same kind of stuff was shown in Star Wars 30 years back, where a planet named Tatooine shown to orbit a double start system. Though there is very less or almost no possibility of life on Kepler 16b because it is very cold and gaseous, which was not the case with Tatooine as shown in Star Wars.

I would say it is not important factor that Kepler does not resembles Tatooine in structure, but the important fact is.. we have found a brand new class of planetary system. The system where planets can orbit a binary star system in which the stars itself orbit each other. This is a new world where two Suns set over horizon everyday… and give a very unique 3 bodies eclipse opportunity..!!

References:http://www.nasa.gov(Details from NASA website)

GRAIL -- The Twin Spacecrafts

The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL is a lunar mission by NASA and scheduled to be launched on September 8, 2011 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 17B. Though there are launch opportunities till Oct 19, 2011.

The main objectives of GRAIL is to determine the structure of the lunar interior deep till core, and to advance understanding of the thermal evolution of the moon. GRAIL will fly twin spacecraft in near polar orbits of Moon, where one spacecraft will follow the other to measure its gravity field in extraordinary detail.

They will fly over the areas of greater and lesser gravity over the lunar surface for measuring Gravity range. They will move slightly toward and away from each other so that the instrument aboard each spacecraft will measure the changes in their relative velocity very precisely. This data will be translated into a high resolution map the Moon's gravitational field.

References:http://www.nasa.gov(Details from NASA website)