The Kepler spacecraft, designed to search for terrestrial planets, has begun transmitting the first data. One exoplanet has already come into focus, and this is just the beginning
The $ 600 million Kepler launches on March 7. Its design is a huge matrix with a capacity of 95 megapixels, which constantly receives data from the same segment of the starry sky - between the constellations of Lyra and Cygnus. Here in the field of view of the apparatus there are no less than 45 million stars, of which 100 thousand are in the sphere of interest of Kepler - it is at them that instruments that record periodic changes in the brightness of stars should look. If small periodic changes are visible in the stellar brightness, then the star may be obscured by the planets revolving around it.
About a month after the launch, the device entered the planned orbit, and NASA specialists decided to remove the protective cover from the telescope mirror - earlier it was necessary so that dust did not fall on the surface of the ultra-precise instrument.
The picture was taken on April 8, 2009, one day after removing the protective cover. It shows a huge number of stars and you can see the star already known to astronomers with the planet TrES-2. She belongs to the class of hot Jupiters. In terms of their mass, such planets are close to Jupiter, but their orbits are much closer to the star than our Mercury. TrES-2 orbits the star in just 2.5 days, while the planet closest to the Sun orbits it in 88 days, Infox.ru reports.
Now you can talk about the successful start of the mission and wait for new results. After all, if he is unlikely to answer the question of whether there is life outside the Earth, then he simply must outline the circle of candidates for a more detailed search.