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How to Find Water in Space
In the persistent quest to discover life, or at least water, on other worlds, NASA scientists are now using a new technique to study extrasolar planets. The EPOCh spacecraft, one part of the Deep Impact extended mission, is responsible for hunting for bright flashes of light, known as sun glints. EPOCh, which appropriately stands for Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization, has been part of the Deep Impact mission since January of 2005 when it launched.
As of January 2010, a little over four hundred extrasolar planets have been found, but many of these are gaseous, like Jupiter, and are not located within the habitable zone. Of course, the planets we are most interested in are those within the habitable zone because that is where we can find planets that resemble our Earth.
The EPOCh spacecraft is making it a little bit easier to find planets similar to our own since it is not too often that we are able to observe ourselves from far away. One of the spacecraft's tasks is to observe the earth from eleven million miles away where it is currently flying through the universe. When the craft looked back at us earlier this month, it was positioned in such a way that it noticed these sun glints, reflected off the surface a body of water near California.
Sun glints can be produced by oceans and other large bodies of liquid or ice and scientists watch for changes in the blue color--this ensures that they are not looking at an unchanging blue planet, like Neptune, which merely indicates the presence of methane gas in the atmosphere. Although we may not always see sun glints from every extrasolar planet, the flashes are quite helpful in helping us determine, from millions of miles away, some of the surface features of the planets.
* To find out more about the Deep Impact mission, click here.
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