8 Mar 2009

Kepler Wakes Up

Johannes Kepler. He taught the world how the planets behave. NASA yesterday (IST, UTC, and the day before, ETZ.), after letting him take a deep slumber, woke him up. NASA wants him now, to look for planets in deep space. I'm speaking of the "Kepler" spacecraft named in honor of the German. The spacecraft was launched in an earth trailing orbit (i.e. to follow the earth all along, during it's revolution, and not orbit the Earth itself.) at 3:49 UTC on the 7th of March. The slumber that I mentioned, is the delay of about a year and a quarter in the mission., which was mostly financial @ NASA. Being used to detect planets in the Milkyway, that are approximately at our Sun's distance from the galactic centre, and in the same galactic plane, It will have a probablity of locating "Earth like" planets for 1 in about 200 stars. Which means, with an estimated span of 3.5 years, and about 3000LY deep, Kepler should have, by the end of the mission, found atleast 350-400 earthlike planets.
Hope I find my loooooong lost cousin soon...;)

PS:If anyone wonders why the label "travel", then please remember, that Kepler has to travel too, to reach outer space. lol...

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