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Kepler first light--let the hunt for a new Earth begin!
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NASA mission managers have successfully ejected the dust cover from the planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope. The Kepler mission, the first of three targeted flying exoplanet hunters, is ready to go to work.
"The cover released and flew away exactly as we designed it to do," said Kepler Project Manager James Fanson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "This is a critical step toward answering a question that has come down to us across 100 generations of human history -- are there other planets like Earth, or are we alone in the galaxy?"
Kepler, which launched on March 6 from Cape Canaveral, Fla., will spend three-and-a-half years staring at more than 100,000 stars in our Milky Way galaxy for signs of Earth-size planets. Some of the planets are expected to orbit in a star's "habitable zone," a warm region where water could pool on the surface.
Kepler will use the largest camera ever flown in space. Called a photometer, the instrument contains special devices that will detect when incoming starlight decreases. In effect, the photometer works by looking for the absence of light when planets pass in front of stars, casting, in simple terms, their shadow.
The telescope's oval-shaped dust cover, measuring 1.7 meters by 1.3 meters (67 inches by 52 inches), protected the photometer from contamination before and after launch. The dust cover also blocked stray light from entering the telescope during launch -- light that could have damaged its sensitive detectors.
The NASA image above is from an animation of how the dust cover ejection worked. Kepler will be followed by two other planet and life-seeking missions:
SIM PlanetQuest, to follow Kepler, will measure the distances and positions of stars with unprecedented accuracy. SIM's precision will allow us to locate planets in the habitable zones around nearby stars.
Finally, the Terrestrial Planet Finder will build upon the legacy of all that have gone before it. With an imaging power 100 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope, the Terrestrial Planet Finder observatories will provide the first photographs of nearby planetary systems.
We will analyze the atmospheres of these distant worlds, looking for carbon dioxide, water and ozone. The substantial presence of all three gasses would suggest that life is present.
So far, 344 exoplanets have been discovered by astronomers, with 291 orbiting their own suns. None have yet shown any signs of being like Earth. Here's the list from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) New Worlds Atlas.
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