The Kepler Mission: Zeroing in on Habitable Earths

Doug Caldwell is a SETI Astronomer and the the Instrument Scientist for the Kepler Mission based at NASA Ames. Dr. Caldwell will give the status of the Kepler instrument and operation, a summary of exoplanet results of the Kepler Mission to date.

Kepler was launched in 2009 and is currently in an Earth trailing orbit. It detects exoplanets by looking for small but regular decreases in the brightness of stars.

On April 4, NASA awarded the Kepler team funding for an extended mission to carry the spacecraft through to 2016. Dr. Caldwell will address how the extended mission will work and what we might expect Kepler to detect in the next four years.