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approximately two-foot (0.6-meter) long model, which replicated the nearly 360-foot (110-meter) space station was more than just a toy

other building brick sets that were launched last year, the LEGO space station was part of an educational collaboration between the Danish toy company and NASA.

used it as a demonstration for a series of recorded videos aimed at engaging and educating children about living and working in space

LEGO's version of the International Space Station built by astronauts living aboard the real orbiting complex

Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa poses with the LEGO model of the International Space Station that he built on board the real space station.

Although building the LEGO space station was an activity aimed at students, it was not all child's play.

LEGOs are an example of something that is a lot of fun on the ground but it can be very frustrating when you have a lot of loose floating pieces

To keep the bricks contained and to protect against some potentially serious dangers

pieced together the model inside a glovebox — a sealed container with gloves built into its sides to allow the contents to be manipulated

crew members use a more complex glovebox to conduct science experiments with hazardous materials

don't have all of these little pieces getting loose and becoming either lost or potentially getting jammed in equipment or even becoming a flammability hazard."

Fire is usually not one of the warnings that people find on the side of LEGO boxes.

there are flammability concerns about the LEGOs

challenging part was using the thick rubber gloves in the containment system because it made me clumsy in building the LEGO space station

real space station was declared "assembly complete" on May 29, 2011

the model was launched in partially-preassembled "chunks" to help make up for the difficulties working with very small pieces in microgravity

The space station could not be launched fully-assembled, because like the real orbiting outpost, it could only be built in space

It's a solid model but I believe it can't bear its own weight under gravity

LEGO station's time fully assembled was short lived however

Due to the flammability hazards, the toy bricks could only be exposed to the open cabin air for two hours.

Step 1: Launch

from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. SpaceX has use of the facility's Space Launch Complex 40

The initial ascent is powered by Falcon 9's first stage, consisting of nine SpaceX Merlin 1C rocket engines

Step 2: Main Engine Cut Off/Stage Separation

At a little before 180 seconds into the flight, the Falcon 9's first stage engines will cut off, and the first stage will drop off, falling back to Earth

the booster's second stage engines should start, further propelling the vehicle into orbit.

Step 3: Payload Separation

Around 9 minutes into the flight, the Dragon capsule should separate from Falcon 9's second stage and orbit on its own

capsule will deploy its solar arrays to start soaking up energy from the sun

Dragon is on its own and must maneuver using its onboard thrusters

Step 4: Orbital Checkouts

Dragon will begin a series of checkouts to make sure it's functioning as designed and ready to meet up with the station

test out its abort system to prove it can terminate its activities and move away from the space station if something goes wrong.

demonstrate its performance in free drift phase, with thrusters inhibited

Teams on the ground will lead the vehicle through tests of

Absolute GPS (AGPS) system, which uses global positioning system satellites to determine its location in space

Step 5: Fly-Under

fire its thrusters to perform a fly-under of the International Space Station

to 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) below the outpost

make radio contact with the station using a system called the COTS Ultra?high frequency Communication Unit to communicate.

Dragon will also test a secondary locator system called the relative GPS system, which uses the spacecraft's position relative to the space station to establish its coordinates

the six-person crew inside the orbiting laboratory will be monitoring their new visitor

use a crew command panel onboard the station to communicate with the capsule and send it a command to turn on a strobe light.

After completing the fly-under, Dragon will loop out in front, above and then behind the space station to position itself for docking.

Step 6: Rendezvous

during Dragon's fourth day of flight, the spacecraft will fire its thrusters again to bring it within 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) of the space station

there, NASA's Mission Control team in Houston will run through a "go-no go" call to confirm all teams are ready for rendezvous

If everyone is "go," Dragon will inch closer, to about 820 feet (250 meters) away from the space station.

series of final checkouts will be performed to make sure all of Dragon's location and navigation systems are accurate

If all looks good, Dragon's SpaceX control team on the ground will command the vehicle to approach the space station

When it reaches 720 feet (220 meters), the astronauts onboard the outpost will command the capsule to halt.

After another series of "go-no go" checks

approach to 656 feet (200 meters), and then 98 feet (30 meters), and finally 32 feet (10 meters), the capture point.

Step 7: Docking

Mission Control will tell the space station crew they are "go" for capturing Dragon

astronaut Don Pettit will use the station's robotic arm to reach out and grab Dragon, pulling it in to the bottom side of the lab's Harmony node, and then attaching it.

The next day, after more checkouts, the crew will open the hatch between Dragon and the station.

Over the coming weeks, the astronauts will spend about 25 hours unpacking the 1,014 pounds (460 kilograms) of cargo that Dragon delivers

none of the cargo is critical (since this is a test flight),

capsule will arrive bearing food, water, clothing and supplies for the crew.

Step 8: Undocking

Dragon is due to spend about 18 days docked at the International Space Station.

the station astronauts will use the robotic arm to maneuver the capsule out to about 33 feet (10 meters) away, then release it. Dragon will then use its thrusters to fly a safe distance away from the laboratory.

Step 9: Re-entry

About four hours after departing the space station, Dragon will fire its engines to make what's called a de-orbit burn

will set the capsule on a course for re-entry through Earth's atmosphere

spacecraft is equipped with a heat shield to protect it from the fiery temperatures of its 7-minute re-entry flight.

Step 10: Landing

due to splash down in the Pacific Ocean to end its mission

There, recovery crews will be waiting to collect the capsule about 250 miles (450 kilometers) off the West Coast of the United States

Three veteran space travelers from three different countries are gearing up to launch toward the International Space Station

will join the three spaceflyers already living on the space station: commander Gennady Padalka of Russia, his cosmonaut colleague Sergei Revin, and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba, who have all been in space since May.

Malenchenko: Malenchenko, 50, is a colonel in the Russian Air Force and will command the Soyuz spacecraft for Russia's Federal Space Agency. He is making his third trip

first long-duration spaceflight aboard Russia's Mir space station.

Sunita Williams: Williams, 46, hails from Needham, Mass., and is a U.S. Navy captain making her second long-duration spaceflight

Williams currently holds the world record for most spacewalks by a woman (four) and the most time in space by a female astronaut (195 days

Akhiko Hoshide: Hoshide, 44, is an astronaut with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and is making his second spaceflight

Hoshide first flew to the space station in 2008

to deliver Japan's huge Kibo laboratory module to the International Space Station.

Through the remainder of this year, 200 experiments will be performed

occurred 13.8 billion years ago

These newfound objects allowed the researchers to calculate that an FRB should occur once every 10 seconds

whether the new signals came from inside or outside the Milky Way.

they studied how the radio waves were affected by the material they pass through — a technique that could allow these new objects to shed light on the components of space.

As radio waves travel in space, they are stretched and slowed by the ionized material through which they move

Using models, the team concluded that the FRBs traveled billions of light-years — much farther than the edge of Earth's galaxy

the source is likely located in another galaxy

They are so bright and narrow that we can limit the size of the emission region at the source to just a few hundred kilometers

Although the explosions are brief, the astronomers can pinpoint the bursts' locations pretty accurately

No corresponding object could be observed in optical, gamma or X-ray wavelengths, so the explosions' origins remain unknown to scientists

Possible sources

intersecting magnetic fields from two neutron stars, extremely dense city-size bodies packing the mass of the sun.

A special kind of supernova orbited by a neutron star could potentially produce radio bursts as the star's magnetic field interacts with the explosion of the supernova

such combinations would be rare

favorite explanation is a giant burst from a magnetar, a highly magnetized type of neutron star

performed approximately a year after the FRBs were first spotted, looked at whether the objects continued to produce emission, but the signals appear to be nonrepeating

Efforts are ongoing at the moment to detect FRBs in close to real time, such that they can be followed up quickly

in, the most promising of which were presented in early February

The two scopes were originally built to carry out surveillance missions under a multibillion-dollar NRO program called Future Imagery Architecture

cost overruns and delays killed the program in 2005, and NASA announced in June 2012 that the NRO had bequeathed the instruments to the space agency

the telescopes' 8-foot-wide (2.4 meters) main mirrors are comparable to that of Hubble, the NRO instruments are designed to have a much wider field of view

Seven big ideas

Mars-orbiting space telescope

Exoplanet observatory

General-purpose faint object explorer

Advanced, Hubble-like visible light/ultraviolet telescope

Optical communications node in space (which would aid transmissions to and from deep-space assets)

Geospace dynamic observatory (which would study space weather and the sun-Earth system)

Research of Earth's upper atmosphere (from a spot aboard the International Space Station)

Whatever missions NASA ultimately assigns to the NRO scopes, the instruments are a long way from launch

they're far from being fully outfitted spacecraft.

no instruments on these two telescopes — just primary and secondary mirrors and the support structures

It's going to take a while to develop the instruments and integrate them into the structure

there's no guarantee that it will be

the funding to bring the scopes up to speed, launch them into space and maintain their operations has not been granted. And

17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue

2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta

3 January

8 January

20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells

25 January

An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology

30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch

6 February

Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets

Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans

American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice

10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane

15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people

28 February

Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta

A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart

1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot

3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year

researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants

7 March

A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies

11 March

12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals

14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson

18 March

NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm

27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.

NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station

3 April

15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital

18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft

21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight

After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh

29 April

1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope

A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life

NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like

15 May

16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine

27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory

29 May

Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia

A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent

4 June

During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory

20 June

China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date

26 June

20 June

20 June

6 July

Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms

15 July

ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector

19 July

NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover

Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn

29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth

exoplanet

7 January

Astronomers

report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy

20 February

NASA reports the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest exoplanet yet known, around the size of Earth's Moon

10 June

Scientists report that the earlier claims of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star close to our Solar System, may not be supported by astronomical evidence

25 June – In an unprecedented discovery, astronomers detect three potentially Earthlike exoplanets orbiting a single star in the Gliese 667

11 July For the first time, astronomers determine the true colour of a distant exoplanet. HD 189733 b, a searing-hot gas giant, is said to be a vivid blue colour, most likely due to clouds of silica in its atmosphere

NASA announces that the failing Kepler space observatory may never fully recover. New missions are being considered

15 August

Phase I clinical trials of SAV001 – the first and only preventative HIV vaccine – have been successfully completed with no adverse effects in all patients. Antibody production was greatly boosted after vaccination

3 September

12 September NASA announces that Voyager I has officially left the Solar System, having travelled since 1977

NASA scientists report the Mars Curiosity rover detected "abundant, easily accessible" water (1.5 to 3 weight percent) in soil samples

26 September

In addition, the rover found two principal soil types: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type

mafic

as associated with hydration of the amorphous phases of the soi

perchlorates, the presence of which may make detection of life-related organic molecules difficult, were found at the Curiosity rover landing site

earlier at the more polar site of the Phoenix lander) suggesting a "global distribution of these salts

Astronomers have created the first cloud map of an exoplanet, Kepler-7b

30 September

8 October The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"

16 October Russian authorities raise a large fragment, 654 kg (1,440 lb) total weight, of the Chelyabinsk meteor, a Near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013, from the bottom of Chebarkul lake.

Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through

17 October

22 October – Astronomers have discovered the 1,000th known exoplanet

4 November - Astronomers report, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy

11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars

5 November – India launches its first Mars probe, Mangalyaan

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has made the first discovery of very high energy neutrinos on Earth which had originated from beyond our Solar System

21 November

1 December – China launches the Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission, with a planned landing on December 16

3 December – The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water in the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets: HD 209458b, XO-1b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b

9 December NASA scientists report that the planet Mars had a large freshwater lake (which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life) based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater

12 December NASA announces, based on studies with the Hubble Space Telescope, that water vapor plumes were detected on Europa, moon of Jupiter

14 December – The unmanned Chinese lunar rover Chang'e 3 lands on the Moon, making China the third country to achieve a soft landing there

18 December

nomers have spotted what appears to be the first known "exomoon", located 1,800 light years away

20 December – NASA reports that the Curiosity rover has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a need to drive more carefully, over the rough terrain the rover is currently traveling on its way to Mount Sharp, was also reported

American astronaut Kevin Ford of NASA

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy

Evgeny Tarelkin

stay until March

launched into space on Tuesday (Oct. 23

second half of the space station's six-person Expedition 33 crew

bringing some fishy friends to the space station

ferrying 32 small medaka fish to the space station so they can be placed inside a tank, called the Aquatic Habitat, for an experiment to study how fish adapt to weightlessness.

robotic Dragon space capsule

depart the space station on Sunday (Oct. 28)

will return nearly 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms) of science experiment hardware and other gear back to Earth.

Wednesday (Oct. 31), an unmanned Russian Progress spacecraft will launch toward the space station and arrive six hours later to make a Halloween delivery of food, equipment and other Halloween treats.

55 Cancri e was first discovered in 2004 and is not a habitable world

The world is about twice the width of Earth and is super-dense, with about eight times the mass of Earth.

until now, scientists have never managed to detect the infrared light from the super-Earth world.

pioneering the study of atmospheres of distant planets and paving the way for NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope

Spitzer first detected infrared light from an alien planet in 2005

that world was "hot Jupiter," a gas giant planet much larger than 55 Cancri e that orbited extremely close to its parent star

other telescopes have performed similar feats

Spitzer's view of the 55 Cancri e is the first time the light from a rocky super-Earth type planet has been seen

Since the discovery of 55 Cancri e, astronomers have pinned down increasingly strange features about the planet

already knew it was part of an alien solar system containing five exoplanets centered on the star 55 Cancri in the constellation Cancer

But 55 Cancri e stood out because it is ultra-dense and orbits extremely close to its parent star

26 times closer than the distance between Mercury and our own sun

observations revealed that the star-facing side of 55 Cancri e

temperatures reaching up to 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit (1,726 degrees Celsius).

likely a dark world that lacks the substantial atmosphere needed to warm its nighttime side

the planet is oozing

Past observations of the planet by the Spitzer Space Telescope have suggested that one-fifth of 55 Cancri e is made up of lighter elements, including water

the extreme temperatures and pressures on 55 Cancri e would create what scientists call a "supercritical fluid" state

Supercritical fluids can be imagined as a gas in a liquid state, which can occur under extreme pressures and temperatures

On Earth, water can become a supercritical fluid inside some steam engines.

This graphic illuminates the process by which astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have for the first time detected the light from a super-Earth planet, the alien world of 55 Cancri e 41 light-years from Earth.

planet is likely a rocky world covered with water in a supercritical fluid state and topped off with a steam blanket

could be very similar to Neptune, if you pulled Neptune in toward our sun and watched its atmosphere boil away

detailed in the Astrophysical Journal

Spitzer Space Telescope launched in 2003

telescope engineers modified several settings on the observatory to optimize its alien planet vision

conceived of Spitzer more than 40 years ago

designing a spacecraft that will serve as an orbiting gas station and mechanic.

will be able to top off satellites' fuel tanks

perform minor repairs as needed

first servicing satellite could be ready to go by 2015 or 2016

Currently, most satellites last only as long as their stores of onboard propellant allow

When a spacecraft runs out of fuel, it essentially turns into a very expensive piece of space junk, adding to the massive cloud of debris already clogging Earth orbit.

servicing spacecraft would be controlled from the ground

could operate with varying degrees of autonomy

when the SIS spacecraft itself runs low on fuel, a separately launched "tanker" would replenish its supply of propellant, allowing the vehicle to continue servicing satellites far into the future.

MDA thought it found that customer last year.

However, the two companies announced last month that the deal is off

I guess we were not able to meet those datelines for the original plan, due to various factors

isn't the only business or organization working to develop satellite-servicing technology

Aerospace firm Vivisat, for example, is designing a spacecraft called the Mission Extension Vehicle, which would dock to satellites and provide propulsion and attitude control.

The U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has started a program called Phoenix, which seeks to recycle still-functioning pieces of defunct satellites and incorporate them into new space systems for low cost.

16 February 2012

experience the reef at sunset

see an ancient boulder coral, which may be several hundred years old

drift over the vast coral reef at Maui's Molokini crater

May 29) that it would build and launch a space telescope for public use if it could raise at least $1 million in 33 days.

The telescope will be a twin copy of the Arkyd spacecraft the company is developing to detect, track and study asteroids in preparation for its mining mission

A test version of the spacecraft is set for its maiden trial flight in April 2014, while the crowdfunded model would launch in early 2015

public backers would use it to study celestial objects of their choice

also have the option of sponsoring research projects at schools, universities or museums that could use the instrument.

The telescope will also take

self portraits that show the telescope in orbit, with a user-submitted photo displayed on the instrument's screen

A camera mounted on the hull of the spacecraft will snap the photo.

Already more than 200 backers have ordered selfies for $25 and above.

But if the crowdfunding campaign fails to reach its $1 million goal by June 30, the company will receive none of the money it has raised

e said the results bear on the mystery of dark matter,

"It will not be a minor paper,"

important enough that the scientists rewrote the paper 30 times before they were satisfied with it

it represents a "small step" in figuring out what dark matter is, and perhaps not the final answer

Some physics theories suggest that dark matter is made of WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles), a class of particles that are their own antimatter partner particles

When matter and antimatter partners meet, they annihilate each other, so if two WIMPs collided, they would be destroyed, releasing a pair of daughter particles — an electron and its antimatter counterpart, the positron, in the process

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer has the potential to detect the positrons and electrons produced by dark matter annihilations in the Milky Way

was installed on the International Space Station in May 2011, and so far, it has detected 25 billion particle events, including about 8 billion electrons and positrons

This first science paper will report how many of each were found, and what their energies are

If the experiment detected an abundance of positrons peaking at a certain energy, that could indicate a detection of dark matter,

while electrons are abundant in the universe around us, there are fewer known processes that could give rise to positrons

The smoking gun signature is a rise and then a dramatic fall" in the number of positrons with respect to energy

he positrons produced by dark matter annihilation would have a very specific energy, depending on the mass of the WIMPs making up dark matter

Another telling sign will be the question of whether positrons appear to be coming from one direction in space, or from all around

f they're from dark matter, scientists expect them to be spread evenly through space, but if they're created by some normal astrophysical process, such as a star explosion, then they would originate in a single direction

There is a lot of stuff that can mimic dark matter,"

Regardless of whether AMS has found dark matter yet, the scientists said they expected the question of dark matter's origin to become clearer soon

In 2005, astronomers found evidence of a runaway star that was flying out of the Milky Way galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million mph (2.4 million kph).

part of a double-star system that wandered too close to the supermassive black hole

In the seven years since, 16 of these hypervelocity stars have been found

typical runaway planet would likely dash outward at 7 to 10 million mph (11.3 to 16.1 million kph), but given the right circumstances, a small fraction could have their speeds boosted to up to 30 million mph (48.3 million kph).

hypervelocity planets will escape the Milky Way and travel through interstellar space

a civilization on such a planet, they would have a very exciting journe

Once the planet exits from the local group of galaxies, it will be accelerated away by cosmic expansion. So, within 10 billion years, it would go from the center of the galaxy to all the way to the edge of the observable universe

planet that tightly orbits a runaway star will cross in front and cause its brightness to dim slightly in what astronomers call a "transit

To hitch a ride on a hypervelocity star, a planet would have to be locked in a tight orbit, which ups the odds of witnessing a transit to around 50 percent

first time someone is talking about searching for planets around hypervelocity stars

but they were never used

June 4, NASA announced its acquisition of the telescopes, and the agency's intention to use them for future astronomical research

The two telescopes have main mirrors that measure nearly 8 feet wide (2.4 meters), making them comparable to the veteran Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched into orbit 22 years ago. Grunsfeld called the donated optical hardware "very high quality."

currently being stored in Rochester, N.Y., in facilities belonging to the hardware's manufacturer,

cost to keep them in storage is about $70,000 a year

not insignificant, but it's not something that's unmanageable

One possible application for the telescopes is as a base for NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which is being designed to hunt for dark energy

Given budget projections for the next several years

in an extremely confined fiscal environment

NASA does not anticipate being able to dedicate any funding to the newly acquired telescopes until the James Webb Space Telescope successfully launches

In the meantime, NASA is investigating different uses for the telescopes, and hopes to have input from the scientific community to guide the decision-making process

Planetary Resources, Bellevue, Wash., began a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign May 29 seeking to raise at least $1 million by June 30

14,919 space selfies, according data from Kickstarter

Kicktraq.com, shows that Planetary Resources raised an average of $45,614 a day, with the 17,614 donors contributing an average of $85 each