Kepler Seek 100,000 Different Stars Every Half-Hour

Kepler spacecraft, built to hunt the skies for other Earth-like planets, roared into space from Kennedy Space Center on top of a Delta 2 rocket at 10:49 Friday.
The craft, Kepler, named after German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered laws of planetary motion, is to spend the next three and a half years in an orbit around the Sun, where it will count for finding planets tiny blips in stars caused by planets eclipsing their suns.
NASA scientists said they would spend two months checked spacecraft. During the 600-million mission, Kepler will stare at a patch of the Milky Way in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, recording the brightness of 100,000 stars every other half hour. It is equipped with the largest digital camera ever flown in space.
The aim is to achieve first rigorous census planets and to determine how common or rare Earth-like planets really are. Astronomers estimate associated with Kepler could find dozens of such planets in the so-called living areas suitable for life as we know, but that will take about four years to establish their presence. The answer should pave the way for future efforts to study and collect images terrestrial planets and search for signs of life. (more…)