The Kepler Mission: The Search for Earth-like Planets

BOULDER, Colorado – The hunt for Earth-like worlds orbiting distant suns will get a big boost next year with the liftoff of NASA’s Kepler mission. That spacecraft’s job is to monitor 100,000 stars in a stellar staring contest intended to detect periodic decreases in a star’s brightness—a falloff of light due to planets transiting their parent stars.

Kepler’s pursuit of rocky Earth-sized planets is a step forward in taking on some tough but major questions, such as: Are terrestrial planets common or rare? What are their sizes and distances?

What’s more, how often are such worlds detected in the habitable zone—the region around a star where liquid water should be available on a planet, perhaps making it a homely place for life?

Kepler is a trailblazer for other innovative searches for terrestrial planets. Future plans of planet hunting researchers were detailed here January 26-28 at a media workshop sponsored by the University of Colorado’s Center for Astrobiology.

Get the whole Leonard David story HERE.
[David is a senior writer for SPACE.com]