The Kepler Observatory (1/2)

NASA's Kepler spacecraft is ready to be moved to the launch pad and will soon begin a journey to search for worlds that could potentially host life.

Kepler is scheduled to blast into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., aboard a Delta II rocket on 5th March 2009 at 10:48 p.m. EST. It is the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth -- rocky planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

"Kepler is a critical component in NASA's broader efforts to ultimately find and study planets where Earth-like conditions may be present," said Jon Morse, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The planetary census Kepler takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds around nearby stars."

The Kepler spacecraft will watch a patch of space for 3.5 years or more for signs of Earth-sized planets moving around stars similar to the sun. The patch that Kepler will watch contains about 100,000 stars like the sun. Using special detectors similar to those used in digital cameras, Kepler will look for slight dimming in the stars as planets pass between the star and Kepler. The Kepler's place in space will allow it to watch the same stars constantly throughout its mission, something observatories like Hubble cannot do.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Kepler
• Observatory

[illuminatislut]

nearest galaxy with humanlike inteligent life is, unfortunatelly, NGC 300 - far around 7 Mly from here,

then also M82, NGC 5128 and NGC 4395

[ralerajko]

95 million pixels ooo lol

[glcrazy]

GO GO GO !!! KEPLEEEEEEEEEER !!! :D

[psrb125712]

can't wait

[TECHKLEC]

Yes, it is awesome. But the sheer distances involved make any possible future travel to these systems, manned or unmanned, out of the question in our lifetime. So, I guess the question now is: How accuratly can we conclude that any of these worlds have any potential for sustaining life?

[qpwnsall]

What about L.I.S.A. thats supposed to detect gravitational waves from parallel universes?

[2bsirius]

Awesome! Let's find Kepler and these other missions find interesting planetary systems...