New Scientist, on authority of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reports that the first moon outside of our solar system may have been discovered.

It is not yet clear what double object MOA-2011-BLG-262 is: it may be a rogue planet with a massive moon about 1800 light years from Earth, or a faint star (brown or red dwarf) with a Neptune-sized planet much further away.

The discovery was made by telescopes in New Zealand and Tasmania during a micro-lensing event in 2011. Since the micro-lensing event is over and we don't know the distance of the double object, we cannot distinguish between both possibilities.

(The discovery was published late 2013, but it is making mainstream news now .)

[Cross-posted to SoylentNews]

Today (April 10th) , NASA released over 1000 projects as open source in a searchable database .

NASA already released the source code and schematics of the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer, Command Module (codenamed Comanche054) and the Lunar Module (Luminary099) on July 20th, 2009; the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.

In February of this year, DARPA published a similar catalog. Both code databases are the result of a 2011 order from President Barack Obama that federal agencies increase the pace of technology transfer.

(Cross-submitted to SoylentNews)