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demonstration test flight from the California coast carrying a Canadian satellite to an elliptical earth orbit

Both Cygnus and Falcon 9 were developed with seed money from NASA in a pair of public-private partnerships between NASA and Orbital Sciences and SpaceX

docking was delayed a week due to an easily fixed communications glitch

The Cygnus spacecraft

Hatches to Cygnus

opened on Monday, Sept. 30 after completing leak checks

second commercial partner’s demonstration mission reaches the ISS

Cygnus delivers about 1,300 pounds (589 kilograms) of cargo, including food, clothing, water, science experiments, spare parts and gear to the Expedition 37 crew

SpaceX Falcon 9 blasted off from Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California

deployed Canada’s 1,060 pound (481 kg) Cascade, Smallsat, and Ionospheric Polar Explorer (CASSIOPE) weather satellite and several additional small satellites.

Mission managers have deferred the decision on whether to proceed with or postpone the launch of the Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus commercial cargo craft until more is known about the flow control valve issue

Cygnus is currently scheduled to launch Dec. 18 from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and rendezvous with the station on Dec. 21

Wednesday, the first of two reboosts of the station took place to raise the station’s orbit and set up

for Russian vehicle launches and dockings in 2014

also places the station in position for the arrival of Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus commercial cargo vehicle this month

e 7-minute, 41-second firing

Expedition 38 crew members also tackled a variety of other tasks Thursday, including maintenance work and scientific research

work on the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device, or ARED, which allows the crew to perform a wide range of weightlifting exercises in the weightless environment of the station

installed a jumper in the Quest airlock to provide contingency power to the airlock’s secondary shell heaters

prepared the U.S. spacesuits for some upcoming scheduled maintenance

deployed eight bubble detectors for the RaDI-N experiment, which seeks to characterize the neutron radiation environment of the station

removed and stowed a NanoRacks platform. NanoRacks provides lower-cost microgravity research facilities for small payloads utilizing a standardized “plug-and-play” interface

spoke with students in Kyoto, Japan, via the amateur radio aboard the station

unloading cargo from the Progress 53 cargo vehicle that docked to the station on Nov. 29

collected micro-accelerometer data for the Identification experiment, which examines the station’s dynamic loads during events such as dockings and reboosts

continued the replacement of fans in the Zvezda service module with low-noise units and used a sound level meter to measure the results.

conducted routine maintenance on the life support systems in the Zvezda service module

neither Kepler (nor any telescope) is currently able to directly spot an exoplanet of this size and proximity to its host star

can do is eliminate essentially all other possibilities so that the validity of these planets is really the only viable option

With such a small host star, the team employed a technique that eliminated the possibility that either a background star or a stellar companion could be mimicking what Kepler detected

the team obtained extremely high spatial resolution observations from the eight-meter Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai

using a technique called speckle imaging, as well as adaptive optics (AO) observations from the ten-meter Keck II telescope

The Gemini "speckle" data directly imaged the system to within about 400 million miles (about 4 AU, approximately equal to the orbit of Jupiter in our solar system) of the host star and confirmed that there were no other stellar size objects orbiting within this radius from the star

The host star, Kepler-186, is an M1-type dwarf star relatively close to our solar system, at about 500 light years and is in the constellation of Cygnus

The star is very dim, being over half a million times fainter than the faintest stars we can see with the naked eye

Five small planets have been found orbiting this star, four of which are in very short-period orbits and are very hot

Differential Speckle Survey Instrument (DSSI) on the Gemini North telescope

is a visiting instrument

works on a principle that utilizes multiple short exposures of an object to capture and remove the noise introduced by atmospheric turbulence producing images with extreme detail

planet circles its star every eight and a half hours at a distance of less than one mile

one of tightest known orbit on record and due to this its formation is deemed as impossible and not suitable for life.

The scientists believe no planet can form so close to its star nor could it have moved to its current position.

Kepler-78b poses a challenge to theorists

When this planetary system was forming, the young star was larger than it is now.

the current orbit of Kepler-78b would have been inside the swollen star

The star of Kepler-78b is slightly smaller and less massive than the sun

Sun-like G-type star, which is  located 400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus

The exoplanet was discovered using data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope

follow up observations were made using W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii