![]() Although planets in the HZ are common, many are substantially larger than Earth. The Mission results show that most stars have planets, many of these planets are similar in size to the Earth, and that systems with several planets are common. These discoveries provide the information required for estimates of the frequency of planets in our galaxy. The exoplanet, K2-201Lb, is almost identical to Jupiter in terms of its mass and its distance from its sun was discovered using data obtained in 2016 by NASAs Kepler space telescope. Analysis of the data to date has detected over 4600 planetary candidates which include several hundred Earth-size planetary candidates, over a thousand confirmed planets, and Earth-size planets in the habitable zone (HZ). During that period, the concept evolved from a photometer in an L2 orbit that monitored 6000 stars in a 50 sq deg field-of-view (FOV) to one that was in a heliocentric orbit that simultaneously monitored 170,000 stars with a 105 sq deg FOV. Beginning in 1992 at the start of the NASA Discovery Program, the Kepler Mission concept was proposed five times before its acceptance for mission development in 2001. The development of techniques to do the 10 ppm photometry required for Mission success took years of experimentation, several workshops, and the exploration of many 'blind alleys' before the construction of the flight instrument. The Mission concept and various instrument prototypes were developed at the Ames Research Center over a period of 18 years starting in 1983. ![]() ![]() Kepler is the tenth in the series of NASA Discovery Program missions that are competitively-selected, PI-directed, medium-cost missions. Piaulet and colleagues observed exoplanets Kepler-138c and Kepler-138d with NASA’s Hubble and the retired Spitzer space telescopes and discovered that the planets could be composed largely of water. The Kepler Mission is a space observatory launched in 2009 by NASA to monitor 170,000 stars over a period of four years to determine the frequency of Earth-size and larger planets in and near the habitable zone of Sun-like stars, the size and orbital distributions of these planets, and the types of stars they orbit. ![]()
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