Kepler mission launch, March 6, 2009
Basic Information:
The Kepler Mission is a NASA space telescope designed to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.Using a space photometer developed by NASA, it will observe the brightness of over 100,000 stars over 3.5 years to detect periodic transits of a star by its planets (the transit method of detecting planets).The mission is named in honor of German astronomer Johannes Kepler.Kepler is a mission under NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, focused science missions. NASA's Ames Research Center is the home organization of the science principal investigator and is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. Kepler mission development is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is responsible for developing the Kepler flight system.The Kepler Spacecraft was launched on 6 March 2009 at 22:49:57 UTC-5.
Objectives and methods:
The scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems.This is achieved by surveying a large sample of stars to achieve several goals:
1.Determine how many terrestrial and larger planets there are in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of spectral types of stars
2.Determine the range of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets
3.Estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems
4.Determine the range of orbit size, brightness, size, mass and density of short-period giant planets
5.Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques
6.Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.
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