When was the Kepler Space Telescope launched by NASA?
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The Kepler space telescope, one of NASA’s most important space exploration projects, was launched on March 7, 2009. The launch marked a crucial step in the search for exoplanets, planets outside our solar system. Kepler was designed specifically to answer a fundamental astronomical question: how many Earth-like planets exist in our Milky Way galaxy?
The main objective of the Kepler mission was to discover potentially habitable exoplanets, i.e. planets located in their star’s habitable zone. This zone is a region where conditions could allow the existence of liquid water on the surface of a planet, an essential criterion for life as we know it.
Kepler was equipped with an ultra-sensitive photometer capable of measuring the slight dips in star brightness as planets pass in front of them, a phenomenon known as transit. This telescope was capable of simultaneously observing over 150,000 stars located in a single region of the sky. By recording these transits, Kepler could deduce the presence of planets and determine their size and orbit.
The Kepler telescope was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, aboard a Delta II rocket. Its orbit around the Sun enabled the telescope to track the Earth while maintaining a stable view over a vast area of the Milky Way. From the very first years of its mission, Kepler has provided a wealth of unprecedented information on the diversity of planetary systems.
One of Kepler’s first major discoveries was the identification of several planetary systems containing planets of various sizes, some comparable to Earth, others much larger, such as hot Jupiters, gas giants located very close to their star. One of Kepler’s most remarkable discoveries was Kepler-186f, the first Earth-sized exoplanet discovered in its star’s habitable zone, a major breakthrough in the search for extraterrestrial life.
In 2013, Kepler suffered a critical failure: two of its four reaction wheels, needed to steer the telescope, failed. This made it impossible to continue its precise observations. However, NASA succeeded in extending Kepler’s mission by cleverly reusing the remaining instruments, in a new mission dubbed K2. This phase of the K2 mission enabled Kepler to continue discovering planets in other parts of the sky, but in a smaller field of view.
For almost a decade, Kepler has transformed our understanding of the universe. Before its launch, astronomers knew of only a few hundred exoplanets. Thanks to Kepler, that number has risen to several thousand, with over 2,600 confirmed planets and thousands more candidates. Kepler has demonstrated that planets are commonplace in the galaxy, and that many stars have planetary systems. His discovery that small, rocky planets like Earth can be common in the habitable zone has opened up fascinating prospects for the search for life elsewhere in the universe.
Kepler ceased operations in October 2018 due to a lack of fuel, but its legacy lives on. The data collected by Kepler will continue to be analyzed for many years to come, and has already inspired new projects such as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which continues to explore exoplanets.
The launch of the Kepler space telescope in 2009 marked a major breakthrough in modern astronomy, offering mankind an unprecedented view of planetary systems beyond our own solar system. Thanks to Kepler, we’ve discovered that our galaxy is probably filled with billions of planets, some of them potentially habitable. Kepler changed our understanding of the universe forever, and left a lasting legacy in the search for extraterrestrial life.
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When was the Kepler Space Telescope launched by NASA?
Answer
The Kepler space telescope was launched by NASA on March 7, 2009. Its main mission is to discover exoplanets outside our solar system.