How Will Kepler Mission Find Earth Like Planets?
Earlier this week we spoke about finding Earth-like planets, and how hard it is to find them. We would like to see other planets similar to Earth, and we have a few absolutely necessary conditions: the planet must be rocky, solid, dense like Earth, a source of power like a Sun, chemicals resulted from volcanic activity, and liquid water. The most important thing however, is that the planet must be located in the Goldilocks zone, the area where the planet is not too far and not too close from a star. In order to find such planets NASA has begun the Kepler Mission which will last four year. The Kepler Mission consists of observing 100,000 Sun-like stars, and to be more accurate: scientists will study the so-called planetary transits. If you are not familiar with it then here is what this is: when a planet passes in front of its parent Sun as soon from Earth’s point of view, the brightness of the specific parent Sun decreases. At the moment it is unknown if planetary transits are very com
Kepler mission to find Earth-like planets scores early success A space telescope dedicated to the hunt for Earth-like planets has detected a distant world for the first time, beginning a new phase in the search for extra-terrestrial life. While the planet identified by the Kepler spacecraft was already known to astronomers, the find has proved that its sophisticated instruments are working and that it is capable of revealing small, rocky worlds like our own orbiting other stars. The success sets the stage for Kepler to take a galactic census of Earth-like planets that might be capable of supporting life. Over the next 3 and a half years, the orbiting observatory will inspect 100,000 stars for evidence of rocky planets too small to be detected by ground-based observatories. Astronomers expect it to find hundreds, of which as many as 50 or more may be orbiting their parent stars in the “Goldilocks zone” — in which conditions are neither too hot nor too cold for life. Kepler’s first succe
