Title: Strange New Worlds: Exploring Exoplanets with NASA’s Kepler/K2 Mission and Beyond

The Kepler mission, and its extended mission K2, have revolutionized humanity’s knowledge of planets orbiting other stars (“exoplanets”) over the past decade. Dr. Jessie Dotson (NASA Ames) is the Project Scientist for the K2 mission, and will summarize the Kepler/K2 mission and its exoplanet discoveries. Dr. Eric Mamajek (JPL/Caltech) is Deputy Program Chief Scientist for NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration
Program, and will discuss NASA’s long-term plans for discovering and characterizing exoplanets, and how Kepler/K2 is helping inform mission planning for designing space telescopes with the goal of imaging and taking the spectra of Earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars.