Spacecraft searches for other Earths

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By Jennifer Harper

E.T., phone home. Or at least phone Kepler, which blasted off from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Friday night with a distinctively different mission.

The bus-sized NASA spacecraft is the world's first attempt to find habitable planets - with water, warmth and all the comforts of Earth.

"This mission attempts to answer a question that is as old as time itself: Are other planets like ours out there?" said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the space agency's Science Mission. "It's not just a science question. It's a basic human question."

And the humans are already onto it.

Kepler is plugged into social media. The spacecraft has its own Facebook page, and will Twitter online about its adventures in the friendliest of terms (http://twitter.com/nasakepler) - joining 27 other NASA space missions that also "tweet" about the cosmos in 140 characters or less.

Suggestions for new planet names were already coming in from Kepler's Earthbound fans even before blastoff, which was set for 10:49 p.m. Friday. "Sagan" and "Hawking" were among the contenders.

"Thank u all 4 your best wishes on my voyage. Can't wait to leave Earth's gravity and head towards my orbit," Kepler twittered amiably back.

For all the gravitas and complexity of its mission, Kepler itself is fairly straightforward. The simple, drum-shaped craft will remain in an isolated orbit behind the Earth, relative to the sun, for about 3 1/2 years, monitoring a select patch of 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy. Kepler has no moving parts, save for a few "reaction wheels" to correct its course if needed.

But what an eye.

Kepler's payload includes a telescope so powerful that, from its perch in the heavens, "it could detect one person in a small town flicking off a porch light at night," according to NASA's mission statement. Also on board: the largest camera ever sent into space, devised to detect the faint "winks" - or signatures - of small, promising planets.