Kepler Space Telescope looks for Earth-like planets, and life

By William Atkins
Thursday, 05 February 2009 20:26

Science - Space

As astronomers expand their search with the Kepler Space Telescope for Earth-like planets outside of our Solar System, they are also seriously expanding their search for life on these extraterrestrial worlds. Shouldn’t we also come up with more serious names for these life forms that we will most likely find?


The Kepler Space Telescope, named in honor of German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler, is scheduled to be launched into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on March 5, 2009 at 10:48 Eastern Standard Time (EST), 15:48:43 Universal Time Coordinated (UTC). A Delta II rocket will launch it.

Developed by NASA, the Kepler space observatory is considered a space photometer, which will search for Earth-like planets (planets the size of Earth and larger) orbiting within habitable zones around stars other than the Sun

A photometer is an instrument that is used for measuring light intensity or the optical properties of materials. In this case, the Kepler Space Telescope will measure the light intensity (brightness) of stars as they interact with possible planets orbiting about them within the Milky Way Galaxy.

This space observatory was designed to observe the brightness of more than 100,000 stars over its 3.5-year operational lifetime in order to detect whether planets orbit past these stars. When passing (transiting) in front of such stars, a planet will slightly reduce the brightness of the starlight reaching Earth (or, in this case, the Kepler Space Telescope).

With its mission to search and seek out Earth-sized planets in habitable zones (regions around their star that is conducive to life) in their solar systems, humans are at a technological stage in their development where we have the ability to “see” Earth-sized planets outside of our local area we call our Solar System.

In fact, William Borucki (NASA’s Ames Research Center and chief scientist with the Kepler Space Telescope) states, "We all hope that there will be lots of such planets. If there are lots of Earths out there, there may be lots of life out there….just waiting for us to contact them". [New Scientist: “Space telescope to boost hunt for alien Earths”]

Page two talks about Habitable Zones, and why they are important in our search for life on planets.