First mission to search Earth-like planets outside the solar system
New York, Feb 20: NASA is scheduled to launch its first mission to search Earth-like planets outside the solar system.
Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.
Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.The US agency’s Kepler spacecraft will be blasted into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on March 5 aboard a Delta II rocket.
“Kepler is a critical component in NASA’s broader efforts to ultimately find and study planets where Earth-like conditions may be present,” Jon Morse, Astrophysics Division Director at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington said.
Some solar systems are oriented in such a way that when their planets cross in front of their stars, as seen from our Earthly point of view, cause their stars’ light to slightly dim, or wink.
The Kepler, equipped with an especially designed telescope to detect the periodic dimming of stars that planets cause as they pass by, will note even the faintest of these winks, registering changes in brightness of only 20 parts per million, the Director said.
By staring at one large patch of sky for the duration of its lifetime, the telescope will be able to watch planets periodically transit their stars over multiple cycles. This will allow astronomers to confirm the presence of planets.
The mission will spend three and a half years surveying more than 100,000 sun-like stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy, Morse said.
Earth-size planets in habitable zones would theoretically take about a year to complete one orbit, so Kepler will monitor those stars for at least three years to confirm their presence, he said.
“If Earth-size planets are common in the habitable zone, Kepler could find dozens; if those planets are rare, Kepler might find none,” Morse added.
“Finding few or no Earths indicates that we might be alone”.
“Kepler is a critical cornerstone in understanding what types of planets are formed around other stars,” exoplanet hunter Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University said.
“The discoveries that emerge will be used immediately to study the atmospheres of large, gas exoplanets with Spitzer.
And the statistics that are compiled will help us chart a course toward one day imaging a pale blue dot like our planet, orbiting another star in our galaxy.”
“In the end, the mission will be our first step toward answering a question posed by the ancient Greeks: are there other worlds like ours or are we alone?” NASA said.
Bureau Report
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