BBC News : 1 September 2010

Experts from the US space agency Nasa are travelling to a copper mine in Chile where 33 miners have been trapped underground for almost a month.

The specialists will advise the Chilean government on how to keep the miners in good spirits under extreme conditions.

Nasa's deputy chief medical officer Michael Duncan has already told Chilean officials to be frank with the miners about how long their rescue will take.

Drilling work to rescue the miners could take three to four months.

The miners have been told it could take a long time to get them out of the San Jose mine, in Copiapo, but have not been given dates.

On Tuesday, the company that owns the mine asked for forgiveness from the miners' relatives, many of whom have accused it of ignoring safety guidelines.

The firm denies the accusations, but described the unfolding drama at the San Jose mine as "a terrible situation".The Nasa team, made up of a doctor, a nutritionist, an engineer and a psychologist, has considerable experience of space missions and is used to helping astronauts cope with extreme conditions and months of solitude.

Mr Duncan, who is leading the Nasa team in Chile, said his group had been asked to provide help in nutrition and behavioural health.

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News

Astronomers have discovered a planetary system containing at least five planets that orbit a star called HD 10180, which is much like our own Sun.

The star is 127 light years away, in the southern constellation of Hydrus.

The researchers used the European Southern Observatory (Eso) to monitor light emitted from the system and identify and characterise the planets.

They say this is the "richest" system of exoplanets - planets outside our own Solar System - ever found.

Christophe Lovis from Geneva University's observatory in Switzerland was lead researcher on the study. He said that his team had probably found "the system with the most planets yet discovered"."This also highlights the fact that we are now entering a new era in exoplanet research - the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets," he said.

The research has been submitted for publication to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Eso's High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (or Harps) instrument was responsible for the discovery.

Harps measures the wobble of a star; this gives a measure of how much it is being tugged on by an orbiting planet.

"If there is one planet it will induce a little movement - the star will come towards us and move away," Dr Lovis explained to BBC News.

"And what works for one [planet] works for many."

With many planets orbiting the star, its movement becomes a very complex "superposition" of several different planet-induced movements. Using Harp, Dr Lovis and his team were able to measure this and break it down, in order to calculate how many planets were in the system, how great each of their masses was, and even the path of each individual planet's orbit.