We're still a REALLY long way from Earth 2.0
Star-gazers, astronomy enthusiasts and space nerds have been treated to some truly incredible news today.
NASA has announced a potentially game changing discovery – a planet similar to Earth that could very well support life, and possibly even human life.
It’s being dubbed Earth 2.0 but is officially called Kepler 452b. It rotates through a star system about 1,400 light years from the Solar System.
And, most incredibly, NASA seems to believe that humankind could one day walk on its surface.
If that isn’t the sort of news that could inspire new generations of space explorers then nothing is.
It has been almost 50 years since humanity’s ‘giant leap’ on the surface of the moon, and it’s times like now when we should remember the incredible bravery of the men and women who have volunteered to boldly go where no one has gone before.
It is probably no coincidence that today has been the day that another piece of startling space age footage has come to prominence.
Footage of a crash that almost killed Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong has surfaced again and goes to highlight the skill and bravery of the people who, in a generation or two’s time, could set foot on a habitable world.
The recording comes from 1968 and shows the Apollo 11 commander struggling to control a prototype of the landing module of the type that would later carry Armstrong to the place from which he would utter the immortal words, “the Eagle has landed”.
But it didn’t land this day. A control problem forced Armstrong to eject seconds before the LLRV plummeted to Earth, exploding into a deadly ball of fire.
Obviously, Armstrong survived the crash and later credited the long hours he spent in this and similar craft with giving him the skills he needed land on the moon in 1969 with the help of Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and an army of scientists and engineers back on Earth.
These are truly exciting, and controversial times in the field of space exploration. Elon Musk’s SpaceX company has captured imaginations and ruffled some feathers with its attempts to launch privately owned rockets.
This disaster during testing shows just how far are Kepler 452b could prove to be, when it remains so difficult to effectively launch spacecraft today. The challenges of faster-than-light travel, generally considered to be impossible, produce yet another challenge.
Computers than process information at light speed could soon become a reality though, and there are researchers, both amateur and professional, who believe something like the Warp Drive made famous in Star Trek could also become less science fiction and more science fact one day soon.
