1. Hubble Space Telescope discovers planet vanishing at record speed
• Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a planet GJ 3470b roughly the size of Neptune, evaporating at a rate 100 times faster than a previously identified exoplanet of similar size.
• The findings advance astronomers` knowledge about how planets evolve.
• The planet is 96 light-years away and circles a red dwarf star in the general direction of the constellation Cancer.
• The speed and distance at which planets orbit their respective blazing stars can determine the rate of evaporation of a planet.
• The researchers said GJ 3470b`s lower density makes it unable to gravitationally hang on to the heated atmosphere.
2. NASA’s Voyager 2 enters interstellar space
• NASA’s Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space, leaving behind the solar system.
• Voyager 2 is the only probe ever to study Neptune and Uranus during planetary flybys.
• It is the second man-made object to leave our planet. It is now 11 billion miles from Earth, following behind it’s sister spacecraft, Voyager 1, which is 6 years ahead of it. The probe is estimated to be travelling at 34,000 mph.
• Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited all four gas giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — and discovered 16 moons, as well as phenomena like Neptune’s mysteriously transient Great Dark Spot, the cracks in Europa’s ice shell, and ring features at every planet.
• The Voyager mission was launched in the 1970’s, and the probes sent by NASA were only meant to explore the outer planets – but they just kept on going.
• Voyager 1 departed Earth on 5 September 1977, a few days after Voyager 2 and left our solar system in 2013.
3. NASA`s InSight lander `hears` Martian winds
• NASA`s InSight lander, which touched down on Mars last month, has provided the first-ever "sounds" of Martian wind on the Red Planet.
• InSight sensors captured a haunting low rumble caused by vibrations from the wind, estimated to be blowing between 10 to 15 miles per hour on December 1.
• According to NASA, two very sensitive sensors on the spacecraft detected these wind vibrations.
• The two instruments recorded the wind noise in different ways.
• The air pressure sensor, which will collect meteorological data, recorded these air vibrations directly. The seismometer recorded lander vibrations caused by the wind moving over the spacecraft`s solar panels.
• InSight landed safely at Elysium Planitia on Mars on November 26, kicking off a two-year mission to explore the deep interior of the Red Planet.