Like Luke Skywalker’s property earth “Tatooine“, the pretty actual Kepler-16b orbits a pair of stars 200 gentle many years absent.
NASA artists had some pleasurable depicting an explorer standing on a terrestrial planet, but this exoplanet is most likely a gas large extra like Saturn. In the movies, Tatooine is a hot, dry desert planet while temperatures on Kepler-16n are more like dry ice.
The cloud towns crafted in the habitable cloud tops of the fictional gasoline large “Bespin” in “The Empire Strikes Again” remind researchers of gasoline large planets in our very own photo voltaic system. Scientists theorize gases this kind of as helium-3 and hydrogen could be mined as fuels from planets like Uranus and Neptune.
Kepler-10b may well be a whole lot like the fiery volcanic planet of “Mustafar” where Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker struggle in “Revenge of the Sith”. This exoplanet orbits 20 periods nearer to its Sunlight that Mercury ensuing in floor temperatures exceeding 2500º F. It is even hotter, above 3,600º F on CoRoT-7b which is 70% more substantial than Earth and five situations the mass.
The icy floor of “Hoth” was residence to the Rebel Alliance’s foundation in “The Empire Strikes Back”. In the heart of our Milky Way galaxy lies planet OGLE-2005-BLG-390 in the same way locked in a deep freeze with area temperatures dropping under -300º F. Astronomers found out this icy earth applying micro-lensing, a approach that makes use of distant starlight beyond even the planet’s personal photo voltaic system to expose the planet and its atmosphere.
Closer to house, that is no moon…. basically it is. Mimas, Saturn’s smallest and closest moon, is frequently named the Loss of life Star because of the 80 mile-wide impact crater dominating its surface area. The peak in the center of the crater, shaped as the power of the meteor effects which produced the crater rebounded upward. At just below 250 miles in diameter, Mimas is a bit larger than the Loss of life Star dimensions shown in the Wookiepedia.
Star Wars technological know-how in use currently
The engines which push the science fiction TIE (Twin Ion Engines) fighters have become science actuality.
Initial designed at NASA’s Glenn Investigate Middle, 3 NSTAR ion thrusters electricity the Dawn spacecraft since its start in 2007 to research proto-planets Vesta and Ceres in the asteroid belt in between Mars and Jupiter.
Standard chemical rocket engines and Ion engines equally use fuel to exert to push the car in the reverse direction. But which is where by the similarities stop.
Chemical engines push a whole lot gas out at comparatively slow speeds when ion engines drive very minimal volumes of fuel out at quite higher speeds. Although chemical engines control to make use of about 35% of the electricity contained in their fuels, ion engines technique 90% efficiency, creating them perfect for lengthy duration missions.
ion thrusters are fueled by inert gasses like xenon, or less typically krypton or argon, powering missions for quite a few yrs. That propellant is bombarded with electrons introducing and taking away electrons from propellant building plasma that is guided out of the engine in a magnetic discipline.
Get the job done continues on the next generation of Ion engines together with the NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (Next) and the Annular Motor which guarantee raise the ability output by 3-6 times. Future has been examined consistently for extra than six many years with no a single failure.