Kepler

The Kepler Mission, a NASA Discovery mission, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way Galaxy to detect and characterize hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or nearby the habitable zone. The habitable zone encompasses the distances from a start where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface.

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 percentage of terrestrial and larger planets that are 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 the multiple-star systems
4. Determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivities, sizes, masses and densities of short-period giant planets
5. Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques
6. Determine the properties of those starts that harbor planetary systems

Kepler Findings:

• January 2010 - Five new exoplanets announced
• January 2010 - Kepler receives NASA 2010 System Engineering Excellence Award
• August 2010 - Two planets found transiting same star (Kepler-9c and 9c)
• October 2010 - Kepler wins NASA 2010 Software of the Year Award
• October 2010 - Kepler detects stellar oscillations or "starquakes" 
• December 2010 - New Zooniverse project Planet Hunters using Kepler data
• January 2011 - First rocky planet Kepler-10b discovered
• February 2011 - Six planet system found, Kepler-11
• February 2011 - 1235 candidates announced (68 Earth-size, 288 super-Earth size, 662 Neptune size, 165 Jupiter size and 19 super-Jupiter size. )
• March 2011 - Echoes detected from the depth of a red giant star
• March 2011 - Kepler listens to an orchestra of solar-type stars
• March 2011 - Kepler discovery of eclipsing triple star