Destination Innovation - Episode 1 - Kepler

Destination Innovation is a new series that explores the research, science and other projects underway at the NASA Ames Research Center. Episode 1 focuses on the Kepler Mission, a space telescope that is revolutionizing our knowledge of planets outside our Solar System.

The mission's objective is to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Another goal is to determine how common or rare those planets are among the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy.

For more information about the Kepler mission, please visit http://www.nasa.gov/kepler
For more information about NASA Ames, please visit http://www.nasa.gov/ames

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• nasa
• ames
• research
• center
• ARC
• kepler
• space
• telescope
• exoplanets
• spacecraft
• Ames Research Center
• NASA Ames
• borucki
• batalha
• galaxy
• universe

[237Michael]

Humans should stop their imbecile wars. The money which nowadays is wasted with the military industrial complex should be used to protect Earth's environment, eradicate poverty and finance scientific programs like this. We need a flotilla of at least 10 Keplers!!!

[xxxnexuzxxx7]

I would give anything to get to visit nasa !

[klpartyboy]

Get a telescope to orbit the kepler 22b planet so we can find out if it has life or not :D

i really wana meet an alien before 2100 :p

[OptikBlast]

@237Michael I 100% agree with you.. sadly humans like to kill eachother.. I weep for humanity.

[bkp156]

youtube er et lorteprogram, der ustandseligt beder om flash player- selvom jeg har

opdateret det- der var intet galt før

[sorry8140]

the truth of 2012: buy furniture from Mor because there are no payments til 2014. since we'll be long dead by then, you get free furniture!

[Goprodigy]

Before we can figure out a new technology to go to the star having a new life being, the world may be destroyed by human being ,not nature. That is the end of the world.

[pradyrocks100times]

@Neueregel but see, thats the thing, even if we had spacecrafts that travel at the speed of light.......it would take 4.4 years to get there, but the universe has a strict speed limit (light), and to reach the nearest habitant star (with a planet) it would still take centuries and thousands of years to get there. but here is the thing: we need to travel faster than light, and the speed of light is when time = 0 (when it stops), if we can travel faster, the time would maybe tick backwards

[Neueregel]

@pradyrocks100times Given enough time anything is physically possible. It will just take a few thousand years. The current fastest manmade spaceship speeds is 1.6 x 10^4 m/s (New Horizons spacecraft(2006)) . For a target star 4.3 light years away (Alpha Centauri), the time needed is T = S over V = 4.3 x 10 ^16 over 1.6 x 10 ^4 = ~2.7 x 10^12 sec = almost 90 thousand years or 900 centuries. Anyone fancies that ride?

[Neueregel]

Interesting but they didn't mention anything about the best candidate, Kepler 22-b, (which has a low habitability index anyway.)

[pradyrocks100times]

Even if they found a planet like earth, it would be physically impossible to get there with our technology, our best rockets