Day 83: Kepler and ‘Blood Falls;’ lookin’ for life in all the wild places

What does Antarctica have to do with a mission to search for Earth-like planets around other stars? Maybe not much, usually. But yesterday, NASA’s Kepler mission sent back its first images of the patch of the Milky Way where it will stare for the next three-plus years, hunting for planets in the habitable zones around [...]

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Success! Kepler lifts off to seek other Earths

NASA’s Kepler mission lifted off without a hitch just before 11 p.m. Friday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.  The launch was a bit of a nail-biter, coming on the heels of last week’s failure of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, which plummeted (all $270 million of it) into the ocean when its casing malfunctioned. But everything [...]

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