Artist concept of Kepler in space. (Credit: NASA/JPL)From Science Daily:
ScienceDaily (Aug. 7, 2009) — The first results are in from the Kepler orbiting observatory, the world's most powerful planet-searching telescope, and according to MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager they show that the instrument should have no trouble detecting "alien Earths" -- planets that are about the size of our own.
After its launch on March 6, Kepler began taking test data for engineering purposes. It was this engineering data, before the official inauguration of science operations, that produced the observatory's first published results, appearing this week in the journal Science. Seager, the Ellen Swallow Richards Associate Professor of Planetary Science and Associate Professor of Physics, is part of the Kepler science team but was not personally involved in this initial paper. She appeared at a NASA press conference on Thursday, Aug. 6, to comment on the significance of the results.
Read more ....
No comments:
Post a Comment