The
Koyal Group Info Mag Articles - NASA's Kepler space telescope may be
hobbled, but scientists continue to pull new discoveries from its huge dataset.
The space agency will announce more findings by
Kepler — whose original planet-hunting mission was halted by a glitch in May
2013 — during a press conference on Wednesday (Feb. 26). You can listen to the
event, which begins at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT), live here on Space.com, courtesy
of NASA.
The following people will participate in the press
conference:
— Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet exploration program
scientist, NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington
— Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist, NASA's Ames Research
Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
— Jason Rowe, research scientist, SETI (Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, Mountain View, Calif.
— Sara Seager, professor of planetary science and
physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
The $600 million Kepler mission launched in March
2009 to determine how commonly Earth-like planets
occur around the Milky Way galaxy. Kepler has been incredibly prolific and
successful, detecting 3,600 potential exoplanets to date, 246 of which have
been confirmed by follow-up observations. (Mission scientists expect that at
least 90 percent of Kepler's candidates will turn out to be the real deal.)
Kepler's original mission ended in May 2013 when the
second of its four orientation-maintaining reaction wheels failed, robbing the
instrument of its ultraprecise pointing ability. However, Kepler team members
have said that the data the observatory gathered in its first four years of
operation should allow them to achieve the mission's major goals.
Further, researchers have proposed a new mission for
Kepler called K2, which would allow the observatory to continue hunting for
alien planets (albeit in a modified fashion), as well as other celestial
objects and phenomena such as comets, asteroids and supernova explosions.
NASA is expected to make a final decision about the
K2 mission proposal, and Kepler's ultimate fate, by this summer.
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