A New Exoplanet and a Martian Helicopter

This is a list of articles—probably a good one, but HN is itself a list of articles. A pointer to a pointer to a pointer is too much indirection.

Submissions that are lists usually give rise to threads that are about the lowest common denominator of the list elements [1]. Generic discussion isn't as interesting as specific discussion [2]. It's better to pick the most interesting item from the list and submit that.

Since the helicopter is getting the most discussion, I was going to change the URL to the helicopter story, but it turns out to already have had a thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22843691.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

About the new planet: I read on another site that "Astronomers had written software — called Robovetter — that could go through that data and identify potential planets. However, there was always the possibility the algorithm could miss the data, so a team of roughly a dozen astronomers are going manually through rejected data. And that's how they found Kepler-1649c." https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/earth-sized-exoplanet-hab...

Excerpt:

"Scientists have discovered a new Earth-sized planet in a star’s habitable zone—the region where liquid water could exist on its surface. The discovery was made using data from the now-retired Kepler Space Telescope. Out of all the exoplanets found by Kepler,

this new world—located 300 light-years from Earth—is most similar to Earth in size and estimated temperature."

Video from JPL of a test of the helicopter: https://vimeo.com/326662931

A helicopter on Mars is a challenge due to the low air density: https://youtu.be/GhsZUZmJvaM