Kepler Mission The search for another goldilocks planet

Johannes Kepler Johannes Kepler was born on December 27, 1571 in Weil der Stadt, Wurttemberg in the Holy Roman Empire. He was intelligent which earned him a scholarship to the University of Tubingen to study the Lutheran ministry. He became a teacher but was forced to leave his teaching post at Graz. He moved to Prague to work with the renowned Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. After Tycho died he inherited his position and using Tycho’s data to discover planetary motion. He was the first to correctly explain planetary motion, thereby,becoming founder of celestial mechanics and the first “natural laws” in modern sense.

Kepler probe The Kepler Mission, NASA Discovery mission #10, is specifically designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover dozens of Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. The launch was March, 2009 and is still orbiting. The Kepler Mission also supports the objectives of future NASA Origins theme missions Space Interferometer Mission (SIM) and Terrestrial Planet Finder.

Kepler Probe The scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems. This is achieved by surveying a large sample of stars to: 1.Determine the abundance of terrestrial and larger planets in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars; 2.Determine the distribution of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets; 3. Estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems; 4.Determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivity, sizes, masses and densities of short-period giant planets; 5.Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques; and 6.Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.