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May 13, 2009 06:00 PM | 4
The Kepler spacecraft, launched by NASA in March to look for cousins of Earth—those planets around other stars that have the right conditions for life—is now on the job. The spacecraft is in position, trailing Earth in an orbit around the sun, and has completed a tune-up of its instruments.
"Now the fun begins," Kepler principal investigator Bill Borucki of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said in a statement. "We are all really excited to start sorting through the data and discovering the planets."
Over the next three-plus years, Kepler will train its cameralike eye on a patch of 100,000 stars, carefully monitoring their brightness over time. Where there are planets in orbit across Kepler's line of sight, a periodic dip in the star's glow will give them away.
While a planet similar to Earth—that is, a planet in a roughly yearlong orbit—will likely take the bulk of Kepler's mission to conclusively identify, NASA says that larger gas giants in tighter orbits, the so-called hot Jupiters, could be announced as early as next year. Such hot, massive planets have already been found in relatively large numbers, but Kepler will likely be the first to discover a truly habitable world—not too hot, not too cold—outside the solar system.
Artist's conception of Kepler, along with a map of its field of view: NASA/JPL
Tags:
Kepler,
extrasolar planet,
exoplanets,
Earth-like planets,
extraterrestrial life
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4 Comments
Add CommentHow does Kepler know, based on the amount of light displaced when the planet crosses between Kepler and it's "sun", if it is a "hot planet" or "cold planet"? Are we making the assumption that all habitable planets are roughly the same size as Earth, and would displace the same relative amount of light Earth does from our sun?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm thinking that there was a strong case that was originally presented to NASA executives which detailed the sophisticated science that would be used to discern which planet types were being observed. Not the kind of thing a 60-second blog will tell you. You can imagine how they may be able to create general categories. The 'next level of detail'. From there we go deeper into detail, at a greater cost and greater detail and so on. This is science, we build upon existing knowledge and properly vet each others findings to filter poor technique...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA hot planet is a planet that is relatively close to its star. We know how close it is by how often the star appears to "dim". Dimming every few months to a few weeks means the planets are close. Dimming every year, or possible every many years means the planets are farther away.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe size of the planet is determined by how much the star appears to dim. Large planets block more light than small ones.
These satellites will discover new planets. however no knoledge of life on these planets will be found, or will it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow will we discover this reality, messages from space have yet to give us any indication of exterestial life, and although we may find primitive life forms in our solar system, the evidence, we will need a lot more sophisticated satellites to give us any indication of life out there.
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