Scientists announced yesterday (Feb. 2) that NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 1,235 alien planet candidates, including 54 that orbit in their host stars' habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that allow liquid water to exist.
If a significant portion of these candidates are subsequently confirmed, Kepler may have just doubled — or tripled — the number of known exoplanets, which had stood at about 520. Not bad for its first four months of data collection.
The Kepler Space Telescope launched in March 2009, tasked with searching for Earth-size alien planets in their stars' habitable zones. The telescope's science mission will run through at least November 2012.
Yesterday, SPACE.com caught up with the Kepler mission's principal investigator, Bill Borucki, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. Borucki discussed Kepler's latest finds, how the mission can help astronomers better understand planetary systems — and how it's likely to shape our search for life elsewhere in the galaxy.
That's not an overstatement. To read the interview, click here.