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NASA Begins Hunt for Earth-Like Planets

By Harry Kimball, Newser Staff

Posted Mar 5, 2009 7:20 PM CST

(Newser) – NASA will launch its Kepler space telescope tomorrow on a 3-year mission to look for planets as habitable to life as Earth, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Kepler will use a sophisticated digital camera, 10 times more sensitive than consumer models, to survey distant stars... Read full story »

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NASA • Earth • satellite • Kepler spacecraft • space telescope • outer space • habitable planet

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(NEWSER) - There's a roving eye watching deep space for signs that the truth—or at least other Earth-like planets or even life—is out there, and we're going to get a glimpse this week. The $600 million Kepler observatory is tracking a small piece of sky filled with some 4.5 million stars, and the potential "Goldilocks" planets lurking between them, the New York Times reports. “We will find Earth-size planets in habitable zones,” says one scientist. More»

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(NEWSER) - The Kepler spacecraft prowling the far reaches of the Milky Way will soon find a habitable planet similar to earth, a leading astronomer is convinced. Recent technological advances in the observation of planets outside our own solar system have rapidly brought us closer to finding earth's "twin" planet, says Michel Mayor, the scientist who discovered the first extrasolar planet in 1995. More»

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NASA Begins Hunt for Earth-Like Planets

NASA • Earth • satellite • Kepler spacecraft • space telescope • outer space • habitable planet

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