NASA launched the Kepler space craft in search of earth-like planets. I can hardly wait to burn styrofoam on a pristine new planet.
NASA has launched a spacecraft with a mission to help determine something that has been the theme for many Hollywood movies over the years: whether Earth-like planets might exist elsewhere in space.
The 15-foot tall, 2,320-pound Kepler satellite lifted off yesterday at 10:50 p.m. Eastern time atop a Delta II rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida for a three-and- a-half-year mission to find other planets that may support life, according to a NASA statement distributed by PR Newswire.
Kepler carries a photometer, a device made up of 42 highly sensitive digital light sensors that will monitor a patch of 100,000 stars to detect planets that may orbit them. Its findings will be essential in determining the course of future missions looking for extraterrestrial life, said David Koch, Kepler’s deputy principal investigator.
Y’know, every time I get irate about the latest attempt by Kansas, or Louisiana, or some other state even more backward than Indiana to limit the teaching of high school science to those areas which would not offend the religious sensibilities of a 9th century Pope, I try to balance the humors by pondering the sort of risible sci-fi PR stunts $17 billion/year buys us from real scientists.