March 9, 2009 – Cape Canaveral, Florida — NASA's Kepler successfully launched into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Friday, in hopes of finding other Earth-sized planets orbiting stars much like our sun.
"Our team is thrilled to be a part of something so meaningful to the human race,” said Kepler Project Manager James Fanson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Kepler will help us understand if our Earth is unique or if others like it are out there."
"Kepler now has the perfect place to watch more than 100,000 stars for signs of planets," said William Borucki, the mission's science principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center. “We are on the verge of learning if other Earths are ubiquitous in the galaxy."
Engineers have begun to check Kepler, which is generating its own power from solar panels, to ensure it is working properly. In about a month, NASA will send up commands for Kepler to eject its dust cover and make its first measurements. After another month of calibrating Kepler's single instrument, a wide-field charge-couple device camera, the telescope will begin to search for planets.
Trailing the Earth in its orbit around the Sun, Kepler will aim its 95-megapixel camera on a patch of sky the size of an out-stretched hand that contains more than 4.5 million detectable stars, CBS News reported. Of that total, the science team has picked some 300,000 that are of the right age, composition and brightness to host Earth-like planets. Over the life of the mission, Kepler will monitor more than 100,000 of those.
The spacecraft's camera will not take pictures like other space telescopes. Instead, it will act as a photometer, continually monitoring the brightness of candidate stars and the slight dimming that will result if planets happen to pass in front. By studying subtle changes in brightness from such planetary transits and the timing of repeated cycles, scientists can ferret out potential Earth-like worlds in habitable-zone orbits, CBS News reported.
It will take at least three years to discover and confirm Earth-sized planets orbiting stars like our sun at distances where surface water, and possibly life, could exist.
"Even if we find no planets like Earth, that by itself would be profound,” Borucki said. “It would indicate that we are probably alone in the galaxy."
Who was Kepler?
Johannes Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Württemburg, and he became the first to correctly explain planetary motion.
He is also known as the founder of modern optics for his work investigating the formulation of pictures with a pinhole camera and explaining the process of vision by refraction with the eye. He was also the first to formulate eyeglass designing for nearsightedness and farsightedness.
Kepler died in Regensburg in 1630.
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A United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket carrying the NASA Kepler spacecraft blasts off from Space Launch Complex-17B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, at 10:50 p.m. EST March 6. After a 62-minute flight, the spacecraft was successfully delivered to its assigned orbit.
Photo by Carleton Bailie, United Launch Alliance.
Liftoff of the Delta II rocket carrying NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller
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