Dark matter
The US space agency has just launched three sounding rockets from Australia with a very special mission
The North American space agency has just launched from Australia (on June 26, July 4 and July 6) three sounding rockets with a very special mission: to find out if the planets that revolve around the three stars of the Alpha Centauri system are , or not, capable of supporting life. To do this, two of the ships carry on board a series of experiments specially designed to determine whether the ultraviolet light emitted by Alpha Centauri A (Rigil Kentaurus), Alpha Centauri B (Toliman) and Alpha Centauri C (Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun) is harmful to any life forms that might exist on the worlds that orbit them. The third probe will study X-rays emanating from the interstellar medium: the clouds of gases and particles in the space between stars.
The Alpha Centauri star system is just 4.3 light years distant from Earth. Alpha Centauri A and B form a binary pair, while Proxima Centauri is further apart. Around the first two, very similar to the Sun, no planet has yet been identified, but the red dwarf Proxima Centauri hosts at least two, Proxima b and Proxima c, the first of which, moreover, is in the ‘zone habitable’ of the star, so it could have water on its surface.
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