Now showing
Kepler: A Search For Habitable Planets
About this film
The centuries-old quest for other worlds like our Earth has been rejuvenated by the intense excitement and popular interest surrounding the discovery of hundreds of planets orbiting other stars. There is now clear evidence for substantial numbers of three types of exoplanets; gas giants, hot-super-Earths in short period orbits, and ice giants. The challenge now is to find terrestrial planets (i.e., those one half to twice the size of the Earth), especially those in the habitable zoneâ of their stars where liquid water might exist on the surface of the planet. The Kepler Mission, NASA Discovery mission #10, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zoneâ and determine the fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy that might have such planets.
Directors & creators
NASA Ames Video Group
Subjects
NASA;Kepler;Keplermission;habitableplanets;earthsizeplanets;habitablezone;
More from this pool