Herschel detects bricks of life

The infrared space telescope belonging to the ESA, European Space Agency has aimed its HIFI instrument at the Orion nebula and detected some elementary bricks of life, that is to say molecules that are essential to the living, in this instance water, carbon monoxide, methane, etc. HIFI is a spectrometer which means that it decomposes and analyses light and this is how astronomers have been able to see the chemical fingerprints of these elements within this nebula which is a nursery for the formation of stars and therefore, very probably, future planets. Although this does not make it possible to assert that life will develop in these gestating worlds, Herschel’s observation does show that all the ingredients are, nevertheless, there.

Enjoy Space article “Herschel to observe in HIFI”

Article on the ESA website

Published on 8 March 2010

ALL THE LATEST NEWS

Soyuz in Guiana

This is the mythical rocket par excellence, the one that launched Sputnik, the first satellite and Gagarin, the first man in space. The CSG, Guiana Space Centre, is now one of its launch bases: a historic achievement.
Star Trek and NASA

The first episode of this famous science-fiction series was broadcast in September 1966. NASA has often made references to these programmes, as in the case of the space shuttle Enterprise, which had the same name as the spaceship in the series.
Alan Shepard, from suborbital to the Moon

50 years ago on 5 May 1961, a few weeks after Gagarin, American Alan Shepard reached space. Several years later, he was to walk on the Moon, summarising as it were the race in which the Soviet Union and the United States were competing.