https://www.nasa.gov/...ard/2017/nasa-s-james-webb-space-telescope-completes-final-cryogenic-testing

The vault-like, 40-foot diameter, 40-ton door of Chamber A at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston was unsealed on November 18,
signaling the end of cryogenic testing for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

“After 15 years of planning, chamber refurbishment, hundreds of hours of risk-reduction testing, the dedication of more than 100
individuals through more than 90 days of testing, and surviving Hurricane Harvey, the OTIS cryogenic test has been an outstanding
success,” said Bill Ochs, project manager for the James Webb Space Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Maryland. “The completion of the test is one of the most significant steps in the march to launching Webb.”

These tests included an important alignment check of Webb’s 18 primary mirror segments, to make sure all of the gold-plated,
hexagonal segments acted like a single, monolithic mirror.

Breakthrough Prize Foundation studying privately-funded Enceladus mission - SpaceNews.com
http://spacenews.com/breakthrough-prize-foundation-studying-privately-funded-enceladus-mission/

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation, the organization funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, is examining the feasibility of a private mission to a moon of Saturn.

The effort, still in its early study phases, could eventually lead to a mission to the moon Enceladus. That icy moon likely has an ocean of liquid water underneath
its surface, based in part on plumes emanating from its surface as seen by NASA’s Cassini mission. That has raised its prospects as a potentially habitable world.

Milner first revealed his foundation was considering such a mission during an on-stage interview at a conference in Seattle Nov. 9 organized by The Economist magazine.
“We formed a little workshop around this idea,” he said. “Can we design a low-cost privately-funded mission to Enceladus, which can be launched relatively soon and
that can look more thoroughly at those plumes to try to see what’s going on there?”

Woow!

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/solar-system-s-first-interstellar-visitor-dazzles-scientists

new data reveal the interstellar interloper to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue.
The asteroid, named ‘Oumuamua by its discoverers, is up to one-quarter mile (400 meters) long and highly-
elongated—perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide. That aspect ratio is greater than that of any asteroid or
comet observed in our solar system to date. While its elongated shape is quite surprising, and unlike
asteroids seen in our solar system, it may provide new clues into how other solar systems formed.

Next Generation Astronomical Survey to Map the Entire Sky | SDSS | Press Releases
http://www.sdss.org/press-releases/sdss5/

The next generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V), directed by Juna Kollmeier of the Carnegie Institution for Science,
will move forward with mapping the entire sky following a $16 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The grant will
kickstart a groundbreaking all-sky spectroscopic survey for a next wave of discovery, anticipated to start in 2020.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has been one of the most-successful and influential surveys in the history of astronomy, creating
the most-detailed three-dimensional maps of the universe ever made, with deep multi-color images of one third of the sky, and
spectra for more than three million astronomical objects.

“For more than 20 years, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has defined excellence in astronomy,” says Paul L. Joskow, President of
the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “SDSS-V continues that august tradition by combining cutting-edge research, international
collaboration, technological innovation, and cost-effective grassroots governance. The Sloan Foundation is proud to be a core
supporter of SDSS-V.”

GW170608
http://www.ligo.org/detections/GW170608.php

On November 15, 2017, LIGO Scientific Collaboration announced the observation of another binary black hole coalescence.
The gravitational waves were observed by the twin LIGO detectors on June 8, 2017. This is the lightest black hole binary
observed so far, with component masses 12 and 7 times the mass of the sun.

You Can Visit Real Alien Planets in VR Thanks to This Awesome New Simulation
https://www.space.com/38749-visit-six-real-exoplanets-with-virtual-reality.html

Ever wonder what it would be like to stand on an alien planet while you're lacerated by burning rain?
Most exoplanets might not be great to visit in real life, but a new 360-degree video brings the experience
to the safety of virtual reality, offering viewers a tour of six exoplanets across the universe.

The tour comes from animation-and-virtual-effects house Engine House VFX, which teamed up with the Bristol
Science Centre and exoplanet scientists at the University of Exeter, in England.

Take a Virtual Reality tour of six REAL exoplanets (4K, 360° VR experience) | We The Curious
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhLExhpXX0E

The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog - Planetary Habitability Laboratory @ UPR Arecibo
http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog

Here is the Periodic Table of Exoplanets with over 3700 confirmed worlds:

VIRGO:

http://seti.berkeley.edu:8000/observations-of-ross-128/

Exciting news: the HARPS exoplanet hunter team have discovered a new, Earth-like exoplanet orbiting around the star Ross 128, one of our closest neighbors.
This newly discovered 'exo-Earth', designated Ross 128b, is particularly remarkable as it is thought to have surface temperatures similar to here on Earth.

Curiously, this is the second time this year Ross 128 has been in the news. In May 2017, an intriguing signal in the direction of Ross 128 was detected at
Arecibo. In July, we conducted follow-up observations with Green Bank Telescope and concluded that disappointingly, the signal was most likely due to radio
interference from a passing satellite. Our analysis has now been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Astrobiology; data from our
observations is available for download at http://seti.berkeley.edu/ross128/.

Ross 128 was also observed over the 1.1-1.9 GHz band as part of Breakthrough Listen's nearby star survey. Again, we did not detect any signals of SETI interest.
These data are available online, and our analysis is detailed in the Astrophysical Journal (E. Enriquez et. al., 2017).

So sadly, we've already looked closely at Ross 128 and have come up empty. Nonetheless, as Ross 128b is such an exciting target, we are considering additional,
deeper observations at radio and optical wavelengths. Nearby exoplanets are particularly exciting from a SETI perspective as they permit us to search for and
potentially detect much weaker signals than from more distant targets.