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Prominent experts participated today in the first session of summer school 'Major milestones, challenges and mysteries of astronomy' of the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT), including the director of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, the Cartagena Rafael Rebolo, who explained the latest advances in the detection of Earth-like planets, and the former head of operations in Spain NASA Carlos Gonzalez, who has reviewed the problems that face an exploration mission to Mars.
Rebolo, collaborating for years with the UPCT in the development and improvement of adaptive optics techniques to detect planets by direct imaging, highlighted the "great potential UPCT, with which we jointly discovered giant planets" and contribution researchers from the School of Telecommunications at the Polytechnic to the development of optical instruments Euclid satellite of the European Space Agency.
Half of the stars have planets
In his presentation, cartagenero scientist has explained the latest developments in the search for Earth-like planets.
"Half of the stars of the thousands that have been investigated have planets and smaller are more frequent," said Rebolo, noting that not yet have the technology to detect planets the same size as ours, but two or three times, known as super-Earths, but in the Espresso project being finalized "the most precise spectrograph ever built", which will be installed next year.
"We are able to know the size and mass of the planets and, in producing eclipses, also its chemical composition from how the atmosphere absorbs light," he added Rebolo.
"With similar size to Earth's solid crust know there and atmosphere, which together with temperatures like ours gives ideal conditions for the development of life," he concluded.
Another renowned experts who participated this morning in the course has been the one that was for decades Chief of Operations of the NASA in Spain, Carlos Gonzalez Pintado, who has recounted the problems that the first humans to explore will face Mars .
"Latency, about fifteen minutes, communications will require that the ship be ciberinteligente and able to self-diagnose, but the biggest problems are for astronauts.
There will be little room for the large crew that will be required and will have to live for a year and a half, "Gonzalez Pintado adventure.
"Compared to Mars, the Moon is just around the corner," exemplified from the experience of having monitored the first moon landing.
The industrial engineer calculates that humans can not reach Mars before the decade of the 30 of this century and has recommended students to learn multiple languages ​​at the increasingly "international collaboration" higher, pointing to importance of Russia and China in space missions.
Source: UPCT
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