All went according to plan. The telescope blasted into the sky at 10:49 p.m. Eastern time from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday on the back of a Delta II rocket. 

 

Once it settles down in Earth’s orbit, the telescope named after famed German astronomer Johannes Kepler, will scan the multitude of stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra hoping to finds planets that are earth like: rocky planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone whit liquid water on their surface.

 

The Kepler project manager, Jim Fanson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, said the launch made him feel like Columbus probably felt when he embarked in a quest to discovery a new world. 

 

The Kepler telescope is 15-foot-long telescope equipped with a 55-inch mirror that can monitor a very wide area. It can scrutinize as many as 100,000 stars similar to our sun. The Kepler will trace its targets by using special detectors similar to those used in digital cameras. It will track those planets by monitoring the planets that pass between the telescope and a star, more precisely the planets that pass frequently between a star and the Kepler.  

 

Dr. Edward Weiler, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, underlined the fact that this “historic mission” will attack some of the most basic human questions. The most important one: are we alone in the Universe?