SpaceDaily.com reports: “China is developing ‘counterspace’ weapons that could shoot down satellites or jam signals, a Pentagon official said as the United States unveiled a 10-year strategy for security in space.

‘The investment China is putting into counterspace capabilities is a matter of concern to us,’ deputy secretary of defense for space policy Gregory Schulte told reporters as the defense and intelligence communities released their 10-year National Security Space Strategy (NSSS).

The NSSS marks a huge shift from past practice, outlining a 10-year path for the United States to take in space to ensure it becomes ‘more resilient’ and can defend its assets in a dramatically more crowded, competitive and challenging environment, Schulte said.

A key reason for developing the new strategy was ‘concern about the number of counterspace capabilities that are being developed,’ said Schulte.

‘China is at the forefront of the development of those capabilities,’ he said.

China in 2007 shot down one of its own weather satellites using a medium-range ground missile, sparking international concern not only about how China ‘weaponizing’ space, but also about the debris from the satellite that is still floating around in space.

Beijing is also working on ways to jam satellite signals and is developing directed energy weapons, which emit energy towards a target without firing a projectile, Schulte said…” (Luke 21:25 – America should be concerned as the “kings of the East” prepare for Armageddon along with Russia – Revelation 9:14-18; 16:12; Ezekiel 38:1, 2, 8, 16; Ezekiel 39:1, 2, 12, 13.)

BBC News reports: “Astronomers have identified some 54 new planets where conditions may be suitable for life.

Five of the candidates are Earth-sized.

The announcement from the Kepler space telescope team brings the total number of exoplanet candidates they have identified to more than 1,200.

The data release also confirmed a unique sextet of planets around a single star and 170 further solar systems that include more than one planet circling far-flung stars.

The Kepler telescope was conceived to hunt for exoplanets, staring into a small, fixed patch of the sky in the direction of the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

It looks for the minuscule dimming of light that occurs when an exoplanet passes in front of its host star. Kepler spots ‘candidate’ planets, which typically are confirmed by ground-based observations to confirm their existence.

In just its first few months of operation, as a paper posted to the Arxiv server reports, Kepler has spotted 68 Earth-sized candidates, 288 so-called ‘super-Earths’ that are up to twice Earth’s size, 662 that are Neptune-sized, and 184 that are even larger.

Members of the team announced it had confirmed the Kepler-11 solar system, comprising six large exoplanets tightly circling an eight billion-year-old star that lies about 2,000 light-years away.

‘The fact that we’ve found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy,’ said William Borucki, who heads Kepler’s science programme at NASA’s Ames Research Center.

‘We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone, some of which could have moons with liquid water.’…” (Hebrews 1:2: “Christ…made the worlds [plural].” See also John 1:3, 10; Colossians 1:16, 17; Revelation 4:10, 11.)