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Calling it a mission that may fundamentally change humanity’s view of itself, NASA on Friday prepared to launch a telescope that will search our corner of the Milky Way galaxy for Earth-like planets.

The Kepler spacecraft is scheduled to blast into space on top of a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida just before 11 p.m. ET.

“This is a historical mission. It’s not just a science mission,” NASA Associate Administrator Ed Weiler said during a pre-launch news conference.

“It really attacks some very basic human questions that have been part of our genetic code since that first man or woman looked up in the sky and asked the question: Are we alone?”

Kepler contains a special telescope that will stare at 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way for more than three years as it trails Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

The spacecraft will look for tiny dips in a star’s brightness, which can mean an orbiting planet is passing in front of it — an event called a transit.

The instrument is so precise that it can register changes in brightness of 20 parts per million in stars that are thousands of light years away.

“Being able to make that kind of a sensitive measurement over a very large number of stars was extremely challenging,” Kepler project manager James Fanson said.

“So we’re very proud of the vehicle we have built. This is a crowning achievement for NASA and a monumental step in our search for other worlds around other stars.”

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NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope is poised for a late-night launch tonight to begin seeking out Earth-like planets circling distant stars.

The $600 million Kepler spacecraft is slated to blast off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station tonight at 10:49 p.m. EST (0349 March 7 GMT) on a mission that could profoundly change how humans perceive their role in the universe.

"It very possibly could tell us that Earths are very, very common, that we have lots of neighbors out there," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for science missions. "Or it could tell us that Earths are really, really rare, and we're all alone out there."

Named after Johannes Kepler, the 17th century German scientist who pioneered the laws of planetary motion, the Kepler the spacecraft is NASA's first mission dedicated seeking out planets like Earth orbiting stars at just the right distance to allow liquid water - a vital ingredient for life on our own world - to exist on the surface.

"Kepler is essentially a planet-sifter for Earths," said Patricia Boyd, NASA's Kepler program scientist, adding that the mission is expected to take a census of Earth-like planets to see how common they are in our Milky Way galaxy. "The answer to that question could fundamentally shift our picture of our place in the universe."

Astronomers have discovered nearly 340 extrasolar planets since 1995, but most of them are gas giants, like Jupiter, or larger.

"What we're really interested in are rocky planets like that of the Earth," said William Borucki, Kepler's principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

The forecast for tonight's planned launch appears pristine, with a less than five percent chance of foul weather thwarting Kepler's liftoff, mission managers said. The mission has two launch opportunities; a three-minute window at its first launch time and another window that opens at 11:13 p.m. EST (0414 March 7 GMT).

NASA delayed Kepler's launch by one day last week to allow extra rocket checks on the spacecraft's Delta 2 booster to ensure it was fit to fly. The precaution, stemmed from the Feb. 24 failure of a different rocket carrying a NASA Earth-watching satellite, found Kepler's booster in fine shape for tonight's planned liftoff, mission managers said.

Strange New Earths

After launch, Kepler is designed to turn its unblinking camera eye at a patch of sky between 600 and 3,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. The target zone covers an area similar to what a human hand could cover when held at arm's length.

Kepler will stare at the region for at least 3 1/2 years, measuring the light from 100,000 stars every half hour with a 95 million-pixel camera to watch for the slight dip in a star's brightness that signals a planet moving across it as seen from Earth. It's the equivalent of trying to spot a flea crawl across a car headlight from miles away, NASA has said.

"We certainly won't find E.T.," Borucki said. "But we will find E.T.'s home by looking at all of these stars."

But spotting planets the size of Earth is hard work. Kepler will seek out planets that circle their parent stars in just the right orbit, a so-called habitable or "Goldilocks" zone that is neither too hot nor cold for liquid water to exist.

For example, last month European scientists using the COROT space telescope announced the discovery of COROT-Exo-7b, a small exoplanet with a mass that weighs in at just twice the size of the Earth.

But while the planet's status as the smallest exoplanet has caused some debate, researchers are sure the alien world orbits very close to its parent star, making the trip once every 20 hours. Surface temperatures on COROT-Exo-7b are estimated at 1,832 to 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 to 1,500 degrees Celsius).

"If that planet has an ocean, it flows with molten lead," said Borucki, adding that a planet circling a star from too far out faces a different problem. "Too far out and they're too cold. They're probably frozen solid."

So Kepler will be hunting for planets that move across their stars, or transit, about once every Earth year. Prime candidates will be ones the space telescope spots three times during its initial mission, mission researchers said.

Kepler will scout for its Earth-like quarry from an orbit that trails behind the Earth and circles the sun once every 371 days. While the spacecraft is designed to last 3 1/2 years, it carries enough fuel for up to six years of planet hunting just in case its mission is extended.

"We're very proud of the vehicle we have built," said Jim Fanson, Kepler's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is a crowning achievement for NASA and a monumental step for our search for other Earths around other stars."

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Originally posted by citizen:
If there was any worth to it, the private sector would be doing it. What a waste of money!

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More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

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Originally posted by participant:
Before NASA and Europe were finding big Jupiter sized exoplanets around other stars.

Now they launch a dedicated mission to find alien planets like Earth

If NASA discovers alien planets will they cover it up?

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Originally posted by whozit:
How many years will it be untill it gets close to an Alien World? Will we be alive to see the pics?

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Originally posted by citizen:
If there was any worth to it, the private sector would be doing it.

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Originally posted by JaynezTown:


Putting the word 'Private' in front of something does not always make it better. If you want to push the envelope and do something big and ground breaking like building a colony on Mars then a large government backed program is a necessary evil

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Originally posted by citizen:

That was basically what I was getting at. I was being sarcastic.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Well Byte, there's also the terrible fear amongst the earth-bound powers that be, that should we ever get out of reach of their gun toting thugs...

We might decide to stop listening to the bastards.

And that scares them mightily.

Via Stellarum!

-F

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
And I was SOOOOOoooo trying not to say that...


Yeah, putting a missle up a gravity well is way harder than, well, dropping a rock.

-F

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