Pages

Total Pageviews

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

NASA's Kepler Telescope Discovers 1,284 New Planets

NASA announced the discovery of 1,284 new planets outside our solar system, more than doubling the number of known exoplanets found with the Kepler space telescope.

"This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth," said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington.

The unmanned Kepler space observatory, which launched in 2009, has been scanning 150,000 stars for signs of orbiting bodies, particularly those that might be able to support life


About Kepler Space Observatory

Kepler is a Space Observatory launched on March 07,2009 by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars


The spacecraft, is named after the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler

On May 13, 2009, at 00:01 UTC, Kepler successfully completed its commissioning phase and began its search for planets around other stars

On June 19, 2009, the spacecraft successfully sent its first science data to Earth

The spacecraft has a mass of 1,039 kilograms (2,291 lb) and contains a Schmidt Camera with a 0.95-meter (37.4 in) front corrector plate (lens) feeding a 1.4-meter (55 in) primary mirror – at the time of its launch this was the largest mirror on any telescope outside Earth orbit,though the Herschel Space Observatory took this title a few months later

As of January 2015, Kepler and its follow-up observations had found 1013 confirmed exoplanets in about 440 Steller Systems, along with a further 3,199 unconfirmed planet candidates

No comments:

Post a Comment