NASA's Kepler space telescope, a sharp-eyed spacecraft designed
to hunt for Earthlike planets, is ready to ship out for an early
March launch. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. — the Boulder,
Colo.-based NASA contractor responsible for developing the
Kepler flight system and supporting mission operations —
recently completed the spacecraft's final pre-ship checkout and
delivered the spacecraft to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station,
Fla., for a March 5 liftoff on a Delta 2 booster. "In order to
find Earth-sized planets, you need to stare at the same place in
space and look for dips in the light curve," said John
Troeltzsch, Ball Aerospace program manager for civil space
systems. Kepler initially will look at 140,000 stars, with
project scientists paring the field of study down to 100,000
stars, Troeltzsch said. Building the NASA Discovery-class Kepler
has meant harnessing a trio of key capabilities: pointing
accuracy, a very large field of view and low-noise electronics
to maximize the ability to read data fro