It will hunt for Earth-like exoplanets

Mar 4, 2009 07:29 GMT  ·  By
Kepler will survey a relatively-small portion of the sky at once, while trailing in Earth's orbit
   Kepler will survey a relatively-small portion of the sky at once, while trailing in Earth's orbit

If the newest NASA launch succeeds, we could see the new Kepler Space Telescope up and running by the end of the week, mission officials have announced. After being pushed back by a day, due to concerns over the safety of the mission, the lift-off procedure has been scheduled for Friday, when the Delta II booster carrying the new telescope will leave the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and head for the orbit. This is one of those missions that has the potential to change our understanding of the Universe around us.

“Kepler will push back the boundaries of the unknown in our patch of the Milky Way galaxy, and its discoveries may fundamentally alter humanity's view of itself,” the director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, Jon Morse, shares from its headquarters in Washington, DC.

The mission's main goal is to scan millions of stars around our solar system for signs that may harbor exoplanets much similar in size to our Earth. Should their quest be successful, we could potentially find one or more planets that meet the exact same criteria that Earth does, and which are able to sustain life.

The mission has been named after a 17th century German mathematician who set the foundations of the field of optics and first attempted to describe the basic rules of planetary movement. Although he lived more than 400 years ago, his influence on modern science was remarkable, and so mission planners at NASA have decided to honor his memory in referring to the new Earth-hunter by means of his name. “Now, 400 years later, we're using his discoveries in order to answer a profound and fundamental question about our place in the universe: Are there other Earth-like planets out there?” Morse wonders.

“We're interested in planets like that of Earth, rocky planets in an orbit where life might be possible. When a planet goes across a star, it blocks some light. The bigger the planet, the more light it blocks, so we get the size of the planet from the size of the dimming. We don't want to have false discoveries; we want to be very, very sure that when we say it's an Earth, it really is an Earth,” William Borucki, Kepler's principal scientific investigator, who is now working for the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, explains.

Basically, Kepler will look for a stellar “blink.” Every time a planet passes between the star it orbits and the position of the telescope, it will cause its celestial body to lose a tiny fraction of its brightness. The sensors aboard Kepler are so complex that they are able to pick up these tiny differences on the spot. After it sends its telemetry back to Earth, it can again survey the same portion of the sky in order to determine the distance at which the exoplanet is situated from the star it moves around.