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Two milestones for NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope for search of Earth-like planets
#Kepler Space Telescope #Nasa #science
Washington: NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, which was launched to find potentially habitable, Earth-sized planets, has successfully completed its three-and-a-half-year prime mission and embarks on an extended one that could last four years.
Launched on March 6, 2009, scientists have used Kepler data to identify more than 2,300 planet candidates and confirm more than 100 planets – finding the galaxy is teeming with planetary systems, that planets are prolific and hints that nature makes small planets efficiently.
Representative image. Reuters
So far, hundreds of Earth-size planet candidates have been found as well as candidates that orbit in the habitable zone, the region in a planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet, NASA said in a statement.
None of the candidates is exactly like Earth. With the completion of the prime mission, Kepler has now collected enough data to begin finding true sun-Earth analogs – Earth-size planets with a one-year orbit around stars similar to the sun.
