Release The Planet Hunter
Thursday, March 5th, 2009Tomorrow evening, at about 9:50PM CST, NASA is launching Kepler (depicted in the animation above), its new planet-hunting space telescope on a mission to find Earth-sized and Earth-like planets that might have liquid water. This is important, of course, because it means that these planets could be home to life. It is also important as this means these planets might be “habitable”. To understand the significance of this quest, I point you to the recent TED Talks presentation by Jill Tarter of SETI, which is well worth the time to watch:
At the heart of this mission is the effort to determine just how common planets such as our own are. Some fear we are a unique occurrence in the universe, others believe that earths are possibly quite common. Kepler is departing to bring some resolution to this schism.
The Kepler mission is named after Johannes Kepler, astronomer and author of The Laws of Planetary Motion.
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