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The James Webb Space Telescope is finally done! It'south going to hang out at the Earth-Sun L2 bespeak. That ways the Earth will cake IR heating past the sun, so the JWST can brand observations in the far infrared, without being blinded by the IR glare. The JWST is the successor to Hubble, and at present that it's done with construction, it'southward supposed to launch in 2022.

Speaking of imaging in infinite, we got a decent high-res shot of Schiaparelli's crash site. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Hi-Rise photographic camera zoomed in close and got the nigh detailed photos notwithstanding, which it was able to do because Schiaparelli actually came downward really close to where it was supposed to.

Zooming in on Schiaparelli components on Mars

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Academy of Arizona

Besides virtually NASA: This calendar week it started making the first overtures toward more manned lunar exploration. Nobody's pretending NASA is yanking on their lunar surface gear just yet, just information technology bears noticing it chose to deliver a request for information on lunar missions through a deputy director in its human space flight program.

SpaceX says a helium loading upshot caused the explosion, and with an air of neat confidence it'south trying for a return to flight in 2022. It wants to get started doing flights for NASA once again in 2022, just NASA said "Not so fast, guys," in its September audit. Based on technical and financial challenges, NASA thinks information technology'll take until 2022 — at to the lowest degree — for SpaceX to go everything ship-shape in Bristol fashion.

Another advisory committee at NASA has a os to pick with SpaceX's launch procedures, too. Essentially, because SpaceX uses cryogenically cooled propellants, they take to fuel their rockets equally close to launch time equally possible. But SpaceX wants to have the crew already on board when they practice the fueling. After the September explosion, this has understandably made the ISS advisory committee a footling nervous most the well-being of the coiffure members SpaceX would be ferrying up on the Falcon rocket.

Tasty, tasty heart candy from the ESO this week:

Finally, red dwarf stars tend to have planets, just like the rest of the stars in the universe. Nosotros've been sort of glossing past red dwarfs, though, while we're looking for plausibly habitable planets. Since the habitable zone around a absurd, dim red dwarf is relatively quite small-scale, most astronomers assumed that the odds were relatively weak that we'd find a temperate, nontoxic planet. But new research suggests that while red dwarfs sure do accrue rocky planets, any Globe-size planets that linger in a red dwarf's habitable zone may be "h2o worlds," with global oceans so deep they freeze solid at the bottom from the sheer pressure. Information technology's because planets accrete and migrate in from across the "snow line," the radius effectually a star where the temperature drops depression enough for water to condense. No discussion on whether the squad of researchers take asked Kevin Costner to consult on colonization strategies.