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+-   Countdown To NASA's Kepler Mission-> on Sunday January 11 2009, @12:06AM Adam Korbitz

Submitted by Adam Korbitz on Sunday January 11 2009, @12:06AM
space
Adam Korbitz writes "NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is set to launch late on the evening of March 6th. A few days ago the space telescope arrived in Florida for final launch preparations.

According to the NASA/JPL Planet Quest website:

NASA's Kepler spacecraft, scheduled to launch in March on a journey to search for other Earths, has arrived in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Kepler will hunt for planets using a specialized one-meter diameter telescope called a photometer to measure the small changes in brightness caused by the transits.

Over a four-year period, Kepler will continuously view an amount of sky about equal to the size of a human hand held at arm's length or about equal in area to two "scoops" of the sky made with the Big Dipper constellation.

A map of the area Kepler will search is shown above superimposed on a photograph of the constellation Cygnus, The Swan. More information on the Kepler Field of View can be found here.

NASA has posted a countdown clock for Kepler, as well as animations of the spacecraft mission and the science objectives.

"

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