NASA has scheduled a teleconference on Thursday, to make an announcement on the advancement of its planet-hunting spacecraft, Kepler.
The Kepler space observatory looks for evidence of other possibly inhabitable worlds, by observing stars and looking for subtle changes in their brightness, which might be a clue to a planet orbiting around it.
In its hunt for other Earth-like planets, Kepler has discovered over 700 possible candidates, mission scientists announced in June, of which five solar systems that appear to have more than one transiting planet.
It is very important to follow-up these observations and make sure they are real planets and not binary stars – two stars that orbit one another.
The $600 million spacecraft was launched by NASA from Space Launch Complex 17-B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), in Florida, in March 2009, and it is currently observing a star field in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra - a patch of the Milky Way which counts over 156,000 stars.
Data gathered by the space observatory has also been of great use to astronomers as they wanted to find out if orbiting planets are responsible for the brightness variation for a few hundred stars.
As the Kepler spacecraft has been staring at parts of the universe for recording any evidence about other world for some time now, astronomers have found over 400 exoplanets hanging around stars beyond our solar system.
NASA should make an announcement on Thursday, about the progress of its spacecraft, as it has programmed an afternoon teleconference with journalists.
Officials from the space agency announced on Monday that they will also give information about the “discovery of an intriguing planetary system”.
At this conference will take part principal investigator William Borucki, at the space agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, as well as senior NASA scientists and Kepler mission researchers.
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