The Kepler Mission, NASA Discovery mission #10, was launched on March 6, 2009. The scientific goal of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems, with a special emphasis on the detection of Earth-size planets. It will survey the extended solar neighborhood to detect and characterize hundreds of terrestrial and larger planets in or near the "habitable zone," defined by scientists as the distance from a star where liquid water can exist on a planet's surface. The results will yield a broad understanding of planetary formation, the frequency of formation, the structure of individual planetary systems, and the generic characteristics of stars with terrestrial planets.

Photo: Kepler Space Telescope

Kepler Mission is a leg of Around the World in 80 Telescopes tour: Click to play; click  (lower right) to view video full screen Next stop: South Pole Telescope (previous stop: MTT)

Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy.

READ MORE »