NASA’s Planet-Hunting Kepler Telescope Will Have Long Legacy,
Despite Big Glitch Whether or not NASA’s Kepler spacecraft can
bounce back from the malfunction that has stalled its search for
alien planets, the mission’s place in history is assured,
scientists say. Kepler has spotted more than 2,700 potential
exoplanets to date, with many more waiting to be plucked from
the mission’s huge dataset. Its discoveries have opened the eyes
of scientists and the public alike, revealing that the Milky Way
galaxy abounds with an incredible diversity of alien worlds.
“Kepler has opened up the next set of questions in exoplanets,”
Paul Hertz, astrophysics director at NASA Headquarters in
Washington, D.C., told reporters Wednesday (May 15). “Before we
flew Kepler, we didn’t know that Earth-sized planets in
habitable zones were common throughout our galaxy,” Hertz added.
“We didn’t know that virtually every star in the sky had planets
around them. Now we know that.” An uncertain future The Kepler
spacecraft launched in Marc