Kepler Spacecraft Mission

The Kepler Spacecraft Mission is a NASA Mission to discover extrasolar Milky-Way terrestrial planets (and ideally goldi-locks planets).

• See: The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, NASA Exoplanet Archive, New Worlds Atlas, Current Planet Count Widget.

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References

2010

• http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/QuickGuide/
  • The scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems. This is achieved by surveying a large sample of stars to:
    • Determine the abundance of terrestrial and larger planets in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars;
    • Determine the distribution of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets;
    • Estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems;
    • Determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivities, sizes, masses and densities of short-period giant planets;
    • Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques; and
    • Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.
  • The Kepler Mission also supports the objectives of future NASA Origins theme missions Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) and Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF),
    • By identifying the common stellar characteristics of host stars for future planet searches,
    • By defining the volume of space needed for the search and
    • By allowing SIM to target systems already known to have terrestrial planets.

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