NASA Just Launched a New, Planet-Hunting Telescope!

From launching a new satellite, to finding diamonds from a lost world, researchers have been hard at work transforming how we think about our planet, the solar system, and the rest of the universe.

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Images:

[thesupertendent]

Saw the launch
10/10 would launch again

[TheExoplanetsChannel]

*i regret we will have to wait until january 2019 for the first data to arrive :(*

[Klipik]

It's really amazing how much we can learn from so little evidence.

[tesseraph]

Diamonds being the only remaining clue of a world no longer here?

Fantasy genre writers, GO!

[ozdergekko]

There was once a moderately intelligent, moderately advanced civilisation on the planet that had to give way to the Vogons' intergalactic highway (which was abandoned a few million years later). Some day, we'll probably find a towel floating somewhere in the solar system.

[Ging_]

My favorite episode of Scishow Space for 2018 so far!

[NewMessage]

'Ureilite' sounds like a revolutionary new bathroom tile material.

[DunnickFayuro]

Amazing to see how much info we can extract from a "simple" rock!!!

[admiralnips]

So glad Ive got notifications onfor this. I love my daily dose of knowledge

[thstroyur]

4:05 It's possible that pic was of the diamonds in question, but that's not super clear; it wouldn't hurt either to mention it's possible to crunch _tiny_ amounts of carbon into diamond via say an impact rather than requiring a whole planet for that

[criskity]

What percentage of stars are aligned so that their planets transit from our point of view?

[KatrinaEames]

I'm so excited for TESS! I know I have to wait several months for the first data, but It is still so cool

[MicrobyteAlan]

I saw the launch from my house. Thanks from Orlando

[NotHPotter]

No speculation that it might belong to Theia? An old planet maybe the size of Mars or Mercury that no longer exists, but might have smashed into something and thrown pieces into the solar system? Heck, wouldn't it have to have come from something that came near Earth to wind up in an orbit that dropped the meteorite from it back here on Earth? Or am I getting ahead of myself?

[CHERRISHLOVESTMNT]

OMG Scishow Space finally made it to 1M

[ThePenguinOfTime]

I saw this launch the other day in Florida

[MissMarilynDarling]

i've always said that i think that the Kuiper belt use to be a planet which got smashed into and got spread over the circumference of space

[vossbmp]

When transition method is explained brightness reduction usually over exaggerated on a vertical scale...

[GuiSmith]

We know of at least one proto-planet that came from the inner solar system and interacted with Earth before: the crashing proto-moon. I'm unsure if this theory is still considered accurate, but if I recall it stated that a proto-planet about the size of Mars crashed into proto-Earth. This would've thrown a lot of debris into the solar system, even if most of it stuck around Earth there's little possibility that at least some of it didn't remain in an unstable orbit for a while. Maybe this meteor was one of the straggler asteroids that lasted the longest before finally crashing into Earth.

[CaptainMisery]

how long have we been using the transit method? "regular dips" are pretty rare for our system outside of mercury... like we only get one a year on earth