Free Republic

Vice President Mike Pence said that the U.S. has more military satellites than any other country. Verdict: True The U.S. has 166 military satellites, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Russia and China have the next largest constellations at 89 and 84 military satellites, respectively.

Astronomers monitoring the Kepler space telescope have detected nearly 1,300 planets flying in orbit around distant stars, a cosmic search that began nearly 10 years ago inside a rusty old telescope dome at the Lick Observatory atop Mount Hamilton near San Jose. From the size and orbits of the new-found “exoplanets,” the astronomers said at least 550 could be rocky planets much like Earth, and at least nine are orbiting at just the right distance from their stars to lie inside their “habitable zones” where temperatures would be just right for liquid water, the one ingredient essential for life to...

HONOLULU — Astronomers have discovered 28 new planets outside of our solar system, increasing to 236 the number of known exoplanets, revealing that planets can exist around a broad spectrum of stellar types, from tiny, dim stars to giants.An artist's concept of the Neptune-sized planet GJ436b (right) orbiting the M-class dwarf star Gliese 436 at a distance of 3 million miles.

Two new studies looking at the feasibility of space-based solar power - orbiting satellites that would serve as high-tech space dams - suggest the concept shouldn't be readily dismissed and could generate both Earth-bound and space-based benefits. These "powersats" would catch the flood of energy flowing from the Sun and then pump it to Earth via laser or microwave beam. On earth it would be converted to electricity and fed into power grids to be tapped by terrestrial customers. The thought of beaming energy to Earth via satellite was first brought to light in the late 1960s by Peter Glaser,...