CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., March 7, 2009
Kepler Asks: Are Other Earths Out There?
NASA Spacecraft Will Scan Region Of Milky Way To Detect Signs Of Planets In Hospitable Zones Around Other Stars
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Spectators watch NASA's planet-hunting spacecraft Kepler thunder into the clear night sky in this time-exposure image taken Friday, March 6, 2009, in Cocoa Beach, Fla. (AP/Malcolm Denemark, Florida Today)
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A rendering of the Kepler spacecraft. (NASA)
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Lighting up the night sky, a Delta 2 rocket roared to life and vaulted away from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station late today, boosting a powerful space telescope into orbit around the Sun for a $591 million mission to search for Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars.
"I think people everywhere want to know whether, with all the stars out there, do they have planets that are Earth-sized?" said principal investigator William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center. "Are Earths frequent or are they rare? And this gives us that answer. It's the next step in mankind's exploration of the galaxy."
The Kepler spacecraft's three-and-a-half-year mission began on time at 10:49:57 p.m. with a crackling roar and a torrent of fire that briefly turned night into day along Florida's space coast. Putting on a spectacular weekend sky show, the United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket quickly climbed from its seaside launch pad and arced away to the east over the Atlantic Ocean as it streaked into space.
Just over one minute after launch, six solid-fuel strap-on boosters that were ignited at liftoff to assist the Delta's first-stage engine burned out and fell away while a final set of three ignited for another one-minute burn. The first-stage engine shut down as planned four-and-a-half minutes after launch, and the ascent continued on the power of the Delta's compact second stage.
Two second-stage burns were required before Kepler and its solid-fuel third-stage motor were released for a final one-and-a-half-minute firing to boost the craft out of Earth's orbit. Spacecraft separation came on time at 11:52 p.m. At that point, Kepler was moving out at a blistering 6.2 miles per second.
This was the 339th Delta rocket launched since 1960, the 141st upgraded Delta 2, and the 86th successful Delta launch in a row dating back to January 1997. The Delta 2 record now stands at 139 successful missions against just two failures.
"And now we have plenty of handshakes going on here in the mission director's center because we have confirmation of spacecraft separation," said NASA launch commentator George Diller. "It did occur on time at 61 minutes 49 seconds. ... So at this point, the Kepler team now really gets to work."
Engineers will spend about two months checking out and calibrating Kepler's complex systems before the mission begins in earnest.
(Carter Roberts, Eastbay Astr. Soc.)
The spacecraft's camera will not take pictures like other space telescopes. Instead, it will act as a photometer, continually monitoring the brightness of candidate stars in its wide field of view and the slight dimming that will result if planets happen to pass in front.
By studying subtle changes in brightness from such planetary transits and the timing of repeated cycles, scientists can ferret out potential Earth-like worlds in habitable-zone orbits.
The probability of finding sun-like stars with Earth-like planets in orbits similar to ours - and aligned so that Kepler can "see" them - is about one-half of 1 percent. Given the sample size, however, that still leaves hundreds of potential discoveries.
(NASA)
"There's a lot of desire in the science community to understand extra-terrestrial planets, not just find them," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science. "We've already found 300 or so, mostly from the ground. But now we're entering the stage of going beyond just proving that they exist. It's how many are out there, and perhaps the most important question of all, are there any 'Earths' out there?"
Named in honor of Johannes Kepler, the 17th century German astronomer who formulated the laws of planetary motion, NASA's newest science satellite weighs 2,320 pounds and measures 15.3 feet from top to bottom. It is equipped with four solar panels capable of generating 1,100 watts of power, a radiation-hardened PowerPC flight computer and a Ka-band communications link to relay science data back to Earth. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace of Boulder, Colo.
Kepler will pass the Moon's orbit in just two days as it heads into a 371-day orbit around the Sun, separating slowly from Earth. It will aim itself at a patch of sky near the left wing of Cygnus the Swan, midway between the stars Deneb and Vega.
And then, Kepler will simply stare at the same stars for three-and-a-half years.
"An Earth-like planet passing in front of a sun-like star is going to cause the brightness of that star to dim by only 1 part per 10,000," said Natalie Batalha, a Kepler co-investigator at San Jose State University. "That's like looking at a headlight from a great distance and trying to sense the brightness change when a flea crawls across the surface. But the Kepler instrument is designed to detect such small changes in brightness."
(NASA/Ball Aerospace)
Kepler is capable of detecting Earth-like planets around stars ranging from 600 to 3,000 light years away.
The science team is particularly interested in planets that may orbit within a star's habitable zone. Habitable zones vary in location depending on a star's size and brilliance. By timing changes in a star's light as a transit occurs, scientists can figure out the size of a presumed planet's orbit and thus whether it falls in that star's habitable zone.
"The habitable zone is where we think water will be," Borucki said. "If you can find liquid water on the surface, we think we may very well find life there. So that zone is not too close to the star, because it's too hot and the water boils. Not too far away where the water's condensed and ice-covered, a planet covered with glaciers. It's the 'Goldilocks zone' - not too hot, not too cold, just right for life."
Weiler said Kepler is a pathfinder of sorts for more sophisticated missions that may one day study the atmospheres of Earth-like planets to look for signs of biological - or even industrial - activity.
"A lot of scientists out there would like to immediately go out and build very large telescopes, not just to find Earth-like planets but to study their atmospheres, to search for clues that there might be life on those planets," Weiler said. "The trouble is, most of these proposals start at about $5 billion and work upwards from there.
"Before we actually take the next step, looking for signs of life on Earth-like planets, we've got to be sure there are at least a few Earth-like planets out there. And that's why Kepler is so important. It's a rather small mission, a moderate mission (around $600 million), and it's really a pathfinder for future large space telescopes that will go after the question that we all have: Are we alone in the universe?"
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By William Harwood
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- singingrick09, or whatever name he goes by, buys into the schtick that man needs salvation. yet he calls darwinism a hoax. go figure
- Reply to this comment
- so, singinrick09 has a new nickname now? it has got to be tough when everyone shouts you down....
of course, logic has never been rick's strong suit....maybe preaching under another name will allow him some time to preach. - Reply to this comment
- WGNT, it's called internal conflict or inconsistencies when talking about who said what in the bible. If you've got Genesis 1 saying one thing and Gen 2 saying another that's internal regardless of whether Moses lived or not or whether Evolution is born out by either creation account.
If you've got JC referring to "this generation" to the people he's speaking to there's no reason to believe it's prophesy (by coincidence) to the time YOU live in ( 1948-). By the way, time's running out on that one too so they'll have to "twist the truth" of the bible to account for another failed prophesy. You should do what Jehovah Witnesses learned back in the late 70's: Stop Predicting! You will only lose followers.
One thing about science is that it does have predictive value. For instance it predicted planets- over 350 discovered so far. It predicts Earth-size planets- We'll see soon! It predicted black holes before they were discovered. DNA was inferred before it was discovered. Pretty powerful stuff to put your faith in. - Reply to this comment
- Oh people of Lilliput. -- It does not matter which end of the egg is opened first. -- Got it? -- We're looking for intelligent life out there in the cosmos. -- We have intelligent life right here on Earth that nobody bothers with already! -- FIRST you learn to respect the life around you, right here on Earth, THEN you are allowed to go find other living things, elsewhere. -- NOT before.
- Reply to this comment
- Jesus Christ was a man and a Jew at that. How you religious nut cases drag religion into a space shot could only make sense to you. I just see $600 million thrown out the window.
Posted by hetup-2009
Why do you believe that Jesus Christ was just a man and a Jew. What's your source? - Reply to this comment
- so, singinrick09: the babble says that atheists are fools, eh? does it occur to you that atheists don't give a rat's behind what the bible says?
Posted by honestabe8
Tell that to carljr, after all, he brought up a reference to Christ
;) - Reply to this comment
- Singinrick is a very patient man. His end of times was already predicted wrongly by JC himself saying it would happen "in our generation," which would have been 2000 years ago.
posted by carlj6
This is another common atheist lie that's used widely on various blogs on the WWW. The fact is atheists like yourself twist the Scriptures out of context in order to push your worldview of deception.
When Christ was referring to "this generation" He was speaking prophetically, in case you don't know, that means in the FUTURE. If you were to actually read the ENTIRETY of the Scripture you would clearly see that Israel had to be reborn as a nation again(which is was in 1948) before the generation that Christ was talking about could come into play.
Again, this atheist trick that Christ' prophecy didn't come true is an all too common trick that atheists use to push their evangelical atheism on the internet.
When one reads the WHOLE context of the Scripture, they can clearly see how atheists lie about this.
The funny thing is, atheist try to say Christ said something, yet they don't believe in the Bible to begin with , so how can they use it as a source to claim that Christ said something?
Hilarious! - Reply to this comment
- Religion raises it's "ugly head" every time science undermines its claims, which is to say CONSTANTLY.
Posted by carlj6
Actually science interpreted correctly CONFIRMS the Biblical account of history, not the secular Darwinian myth.
No "religion" is required, unless you're a Darwinists and you're putting all your faith and marbles into the belief that you came from primeval soup. - Reply to this comment
- Regarding bajajohn's comparison of extraterrestrials to "angels," and calling the universe outside of Earth "Heaven," is pretty pathetic. Unless, of course, you're Mormon and actually believe the supreme deity lives on a planet out there. Regarding JC's credentials, as Hetup says he was a Jew and the Jews don't believe he was a reincarnated supreme deity. There's probably more evidence to support alien life (such as methane outflow on Mars) than the fact of JC's existence, much less any spiritual nature.
Religion raises it's "ugly head" every time science undermines its claims, which is to say CONSTANTLY. - Reply to this comment
- Singinrick is a very patient man. His end of times was already predicted wrongly by JC himself saying it would happen "in our generation," which would have been 2000 years ago.
However, Hetup is under the impression that $600 million is "thrown out the window." Many forget that money spent on space doesn't "go into space." It stays here on Earth to form jobs and goes right back into the economy in the form of payroll, payroll taxes, and thru people spending- sales tax.
Much better investment (along with spin-off technologies that have much benefit) than spending a trillion (as someone else posted) on 2 wars with no tangible benefit except jobs created through rebuilding after destroying- not the greatest way to do business! - Reply to this comment
- so, singinrick09: the babble says that atheists are fools, eh? does it occur to you that atheists don't give a rat's behind what the bible says?
- Reply to this comment
- ARE WE IN FINANCIALLY HARD TIMES OR NOT?
- Reply to this comment
- We are only allowed to view photos taken by the Hubble after artists have doctored them. Why then should we blow $600 million on this project? Well maybe it isn't what they say it is."
Never is what they tell us it is, ALL of these space missions have clandestine secret military application interests, even the disgraced king, er... FORMER... king bush was SO antsy about rushing the space station to completion as fast as possible and throwing millions more into it despite the economy made me HIGHLY suspect as to the REAL reraons and motivations for that thing.
All we can hope for is that space station gets hit by some debris, a rock or catches fire and is destroyed for good, 'cause it's nothing less than a sinister device put up for MILITARY spy and weapons purposes, as was the former king's want to go back to the freaking dead MOON with a base- it would have been a military base. - Reply to this comment
- It's a fascinating advance.
That said, I have little faith that mankind will ever go beyond finding several of those planets before destroying itself or creating it's own replacement.
Face it, humans are both weak and temporary.
The best thing we have going for us is the ability to think and reason and even the "reason" part is is questionable sometimes the way we have a habit of destroying each other and everything around us.
Could we build machines that might endure the deprivations, demands and eons that it may take to reach a "habitable" planet? Maybe.
But then again if we built such machines, implanted some form of "artificial intelligence" and sent them on their way would such machines "need" the same environment we would to survive?
Even if we found a way to "hibernate" and "revive" once we got there we could never return and may be little more than a "pest infestation" if we survived at all.
I suspect we are much more transient than we're willing to acknowledge and our BEST contribution may be in fabricating a successor to our species. - Reply to this comment
- We are not allowed to see (with detailed resolution) our earth from satellites we paid to put in orbit. We are only allowed to view photos taken by the Hubble after artists have doctored them. Why then should we blow $600 million on this project? Well maybe it isn't what they say it is.
I think we are allowed to view what can be viewed in public, no need to bring in military & national security issues on this just so that the curious eyes can go google map area 51 just for the hell of it. The only important discovery by the Hubble telescope that matters to me is that there are countless galaxies in the outter space and our Milkyway galaxy is not the only one in the universe.
Before you speculate anything you should do some more in depth research on what this mission is all about and let us know how it went when you're back.
http://kepler.nasa.gov/ - Reply to this comment
- ...what gets me is that we are looking to other Sun systems for planets when we haven't even finished mapping our own. Evidence supports that there are still undiscovered planets in our own system...how about a glance around our own neighborhood?
by piercetheval at 11:50 AM : Mar 8, 2009
what's the point of finding another ice planet that's unhabitable as far as we know? I think scientists already figured out way to calculate the distance of planet from it's own sun to be in that 'habitable zone' of that solar system. It's just fascinating fact that the 16th century medieval era science could produce such work as Kepler's laws of planetary motion. - Reply to this comment
- We are not allowed to see (with detailed resolution) our earth from satellites we paid to put in orbit. We are only allowed to view photos taken by the Hubble after artists have doctored them. Why then should we blow $600 million on this project? Well maybe it isn't what they say it is.
- Reply to this comment
- ...what gets me is that we are looking to other Sun systems for planets when we haven't even finished mapping our own. Evidence supports that there are still undiscovered planets in our own system...how about a glance around our own neighborhood?
- Reply to this comment
- Now isn't this a logical mixing for the religious and the scientist?
Posted by bajajohn1 at 11:26 AM : Mar 8, 2009
Yes. Very good. - Reply to this comment
- Religious folks need not fear the finding of life among the billions of stars. After all, are we not told that the angels came down from Heaven to tell Mary about Jesus' birth? Are we not told God is in heaven? Since we know that Heaven is not located on Earth, then they must be extraterrestial. So therefore, it would benefit all to believe that life exists outside the confines of the planet earth. Now isn't this a logical mixing for the religious and the scientist?
- Reply to this comment
