The Kepler spacecraft vaulted away from Cape Canaveral late
Friday, boosting a powerful space telescope into orbit around
the sun for a $591 million mission to search for Earth-like
planets orbiting distant stars. "I think people everywhere want
to know whether, with all the stars out there, do they have
planets that are Earth-sized?" said principal investigator
William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center. "Are Earths
frequent or are they rare? And this gives us that answer. It's
the next step in mankind's exploration of the galaxy." The
Kepler spacecraft's three-and-a-half-year mission began on time
at 10:49:57 p.m. local time with a crackling roar and a torrent
of fire that briefly turned night into day along Florida's
coast. This was the 339th Delta rocket launched since 1960, the
141st upgraded Delta 2 rocket, and the 86th successful Delta
launch in a row dating back to January 1997. The Delta 2 record
now stands at 139 successful missions against just two failures.
Engineers will spend about two month