Exoplanets & The Kepler Mission

Currently, the launch of NASA's Kepler telescope is targeted for around March 6, from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. There are two launch windows but both will be predicated on weather. The purpose of the Kepler Mission is to see if there if there is life beyond earth and if some just where that life might exist. The common thinking it that life would be on an exoplanet like earth.

Kepler contains a special telescope that will study 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way for more than three years. It will look for small dips in a star's brightness, which can mean an orbiting planet is passing in front it -- an event called a transit. Don't get your hopes up that were going to find some way to escape planet earth by December 21, 2012. :-)

An exoplanet is a planet beyond the Solar System, orbiting a star other than the Sun. As of February 2009, 342 exoplanets are listed in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia. The vast majority has been detected through radial velocity observations and other indirect methods rather than actual imaging. The most announced exoplanets are massive gas giant planets thought to resemble Jupiter. Projections based on recent detections of much smaller worlds suggest that lightweight, rocky planets will eventually be found to outnumber extrasolar gas giants.

We're looking for hope beyond earth!

In a paper published recently in the International Journal of Astrobiology, the researchers concluded that based on what they saw, at least 361 intelligent civilizations have emerged in the Milky Way since its creation, and as many as 38,000 may have formed. Duncan Forgan, a doctoral candidate at the university who led the study, said he was surprised by the hardiness of life on these other worlds.

"The computer model takes into account what we refer to as resetting or extinction events". Forgan added, "I half-expected these events to disallow the rise of intelligence, and yet civilizations seemed to flourish. It's estimated that there are some 330 exoplanet possibilities.
The first exoplanet was confirmed in 1995 and the latest just this month when Europe's COROT space telescope spotted the smallest terrestrial exoplanet ever found. With a diameter less than twice the size of Earth, the planet orbits very close to its star and has temperatures up to 1,500° Celsius (more than 2,700° Fahrenheit), according to the European Space Agency. It may be rocky and covered in lava.

Therefore, much speculation on what is OUT THERE. But, in reality, what w must focus on, while dreaming about the vast universe out there is what's happening within the consciousness of humanhood here on earth. Can we save ourselves and planet earth before we reach a tipping point? Furthermore, at the same time does space have some answers, maybe even some fears, in the coming years leading to 2012?

We'll know soon enough!