NASA has some big news in the hunt for Earth-like planets.
NASA plans to share a discovery from its Kepler Space Telescope in a news conference scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday, a press release announced.
Calling a news conference for the Kepler Telescope, a mission dedicated to finding Earth-like planets in so-called hospitable zones, is unusual. According to CTV, a tantamount goal of the Kepler mission is to find Earth-like planets suitable for supporting the existence of liquid water, a necessary ingredient for life.
NASA will host a news teleconference at noon EDT Thursday, July 23 to announce new discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.
The first exoplanet orbiting another star like our sun was discovered in 1995. Exoplanets, especially small Earth-size worlds, belonged within the realm of science fiction just 21 years ago. Today, and thousands of discoveries later, astronomers are on the cusp of finding something people have dreamed about for thousands of years — another Earth.
The briefing participants are:
- John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington
- Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California
- Jeff Coughlin, Kepler research scientist at SETI Institute in Mountain View, California
- Didier Queloz, professor of astrophysics at Cambridge University, United Kingdom
Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to detect Earth-size planets orbiting distant stars in or near the habitable zone — the range of distances from a star in which the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might sustain liquid water. The telescope has since confirmed more than 1,000 planets and more than 3,000 planet candidates spanning a wide range of sizes and orbital distances, including those in the habitable zone.
For dial-in information, media should e-mail their name, affiliation and telephone number to Felicia Chou atfelicia.chou@nasa.gov no later than 10 a.m. Thursday. Questions can be submitted on Twitter during the teleconference using the hashtag #askNASA.
The teleconference audio and visuals will be streamed live at:
For more information about NASA’s Kepler mission, visit:
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