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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has announced their plans for colonizing Mars, of which includes plans for permanent ‘Earth Independent’ settlements that would be capable of operating for extended missions with little or no material support needed from Earth.

Their report, entitled ‘Journey to Mars’, outlines NASA’s 3-stage plan for developing the path for the long-term colonization of Mars, with the goal of landing a human presence there sometime in the 2030s.
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Linda Moulton Howe reports that the Principal Investigator for the Dawn space probe mission sent to the asteroid Ceres, Christopher Russell, Professor of Geophysics and Space Physics at UCLA cannot discuss the new high resolution images from Ceres because they have been embargoed by the science journal Nature. He may not discuss the images until after the journal publishes its article about them.
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NASA has just announced the discovery of an earth-like planet orbiting a star similar to our sun, and within the star’s habitable zone. The planet has been designated Kepler-452b, and is the first such planet ever discovered. So far, nearly 4000 planets have been discovered in so-called ‘goldilocks zones’ around distant stars–regions where they are neither too hot nor too cold to sustain life. But all of these planets have been determined to be either very small, very large, or gas giants. Kepler-452b is a "bigger cousin of Earth." It has a 385 day orbit and is 5% farther from its star than Earth is from the sun. Its parent star is Kepler-452. It also has gravity twice that of Earth’s.
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NASA has unveiled an array of nine instrument packages that are to be included on an upcoming space probe that will be sent to Jupiter’s moon Europa, of which will include sensors that will look for evidence of life.

Europa is considered to be a good candidate for harboring life, with what scientists believe to be a liquid, salty ocean over a rocky surface, and hydrothermal vents that could provide heat and nutrients for potential organisms. Conditions similar to these are also found on Earth, and teem with life.
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