NASA's Kepler Mission to Seek Other Earths

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Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241
Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

Michael Mewhinney 650-604-3937
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
michael.s.mewhinney@nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2009-025 Feb. 19, 2009

NASA's Kepler Mission to Seek Other Earths

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Kepler spacecraft is ready to be moved to the launch pad
today and will soon begin a journey to search for worlds that could potentially host life.

Kepler is scheduled to blast into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.,
aboard a Delta II rocket on March 5 at 7:48 p.m. Pacific Time (10:48 p.m. Eastern Time).
It is the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth -- rocky planets that orbit
sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface.
Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

"Kepler is a critical component in NASA's broader efforts to ultimately find and study
planets where Earth-like conditions may be present," said Jon Morse, the Astrophysics
Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The planetary census Kepler
takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our
galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds
around nearby stars."

The mission will spend three-and-a-half years surveying more than 100,000 sun-like stars
in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy. It is expected to find hundreds of
planets the size of Earth and larger at various distances from their stars. If Earth-size
planets are common in the habitable zone, Kepler could find dozens; if those planets are
rare, Kepler might find none.

In the end, the mission will be our first step toward answering a question posed by the
ancient Greeks: are there other worlds like ours or are we alone?

"Finding that most stars have Earths implies that the conditions that support the
development of life could be common throughout our galaxy," said William Borucki,
Kepler's science principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field,
Calif. "Finding few or no Earths indicates that we might be alone."

The Kepler telescope is specially designed to detect the periodic dimming of stars that
planets cause as they pass by. Some star systems are oriented in such a way that their
planets cross in front of their stars, as seen from our Earthly point of view. As the planets
pass by, they cause their stars' light to slightly dim, or wink.

The telescope can detect even the faintest of these winks, registering changes in
brightness of only 20 parts per million. To achieve this resolution, Kepler will use the
largest camera ever launched into space, a 95-megapixel array of charged couple devices,
known as CCDs.

"If Kepler were to look down at a small town on Earth at night from space, it would be
able to detect the dimming of a porch light as somebody passed in front," said James
Fanson, Kepler project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

By staring at one large patch of sky for the duration of its lifetime, Kepler will be able to
watch planets periodically transit their stars over multiple cycles. This will allow
astronomers to confirm the presence of planets. Earth-size planets in habitable zones
would theoretically take about a year to complete one orbit, so Kepler will monitor those
stars for at least three years to confirm the planets' presence. Ground-based telescopes
and NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes will perform follow-up studies on the
larger planets.

"Kepler is a critical cornerstone in understanding what types of planets are formed around
other stars," said exoplanet hunter Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University in
California. "The discoveries that emerge will be used immediately to study the
atmospheres of large, gas exoplanets with Spitzer. And the statistics that are compiled
will help us chart a course toward one day imaging a pale blue dot like our planet, orbiting
another star in our galaxy."

Kepler is a NASA Discovery mission. Ames is the home organization of the science
principal investigator, and is responsible for the ground system development, mission
operations and science data analysis. JPL manages the Kepler mission development. Ball
Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., is responsible for developing the
Kepler flight system and supporting mission operations. For more information about the
Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler .

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