NASA planet hunter rockets into space
Monica
Friday, March 6, 2009
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA's planet-hunting spacecraft, Kepler,
rocketed into space Friday night on a historic voyage to track down
other Earths in a faraway patch of the Milky Way galaxy.
It's the first mission capable of answering the age-old question: Are
other worlds like ours out there?
Kepler, named after the German 17th century astrophysicist, set off on
its unprecedented mission at 10:49 p.m., thundering into a clear sky
embellished by a waxing moon.
Its mission will last at least 3 1/2 years and cost $600 million.
The goal is to find, if they're there, Earth-like planets circling
stars in the so-called habitable zone - orbits where liquid water
could be present on the surface of the planets. That would mean there
are lots of places out there for life to evolve, said Kepler's
principal scientist, Bill Borucki.
On the other hand, "if we don't find any, it really means Earths are
very rare, we might be the only extant life and, in fact, that will be
the end of 'Star Trek.' "
Once it's settled into an Earth-trailing orbit around the sun, Kepler
will stare nonstop at 100,000 stars near the Cygnus and Lyra
constellations, between 600 and 3,000 light years away. The telescope
will watch for any dimming, or winks, in the stellar brightness that
might be caused by orbiting planets.
Astronomers already have found more than 300 planets orbiting other
stars, but they're largely inhospitable gas giants like Jupiter.
Kepler will be looking for smaller rocky planets akin to Earth.
Kepler is designed to find hundreds of Earth-like planets if they're
common and, perhaps, dozens of them in the habitable zone, Borucki
said. The telescope is so powerful that from space, NASA maintains, it
could detect someone in a small town turning off a porch light at
night.
It won't be looking for signs of life, though. That's for future
spacecraft.
NASA was counting on a successful launch to offset the loss 1 1/2
weeks earlier of the space agency's Orbiting Carbon Observatory. That
environmental satellite ended up crashing into the Antarctic because
of rocket failure. It was a different type of rocket than the one used
for Kepler.
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~American Indian~
Lookin for new territory..???
Winter gettin you down...???
Cut/Paste nd post something Not Native>>>>I double dare you.
It can Not Be done...not in your life time....
Wayne George
^^^^^^^
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