NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Ready to Ship to Florida

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-240

NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Ready to Ship to Florida
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
December 18, 2008

PASADENA, Calif. -- Engineers are getting ready to pack NASA's Kepler
spacecraft into a container and ship it off to its launch site at Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

The mission, scheduled to launch on March 5, will seek to answer an
age-old question -- are there other Earths in space?

"Kepler is ready to begin its journey to its launch site, and
ultimately
to space, where it will answer a question that has been pondered by
humankind at least as long ago as the ancient Greeks," said James
Fanson, the project manager for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Kepler will monitor more than 100,000 stars for signatures of planets
of
various sizes and orbital distances. It has the ability to locate
rocky
planets like Earth, including those that lie in a star's "habitable
zone," a region where liquid water, and perhaps life, could exist. If
these Earth-size worlds do exist around stars like our sun, Kepler is
expected to be the first to find them, and the first to measure their
frequency.

"Kepler's mission is to determine whether Earth-size planets in the
habitable zone of other stars are frequent or rare; whether life in
our
Milky Way galaxy is likely to be frequent or rare," said William
Borucki, the Kepler science principal investigator at NASA's Ames
Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

Kepler is currently at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder,
Colo. It passed all its environmental tests ensuring that it is
prepared
for the harsh trip to space. It also passed what's called the "pre-
ship
review," meaning that it is ready to be shipped via convoy to Florida
in
early January. Its first stop will be Astrotech in Titusville, Fla.,
where the spacecraft will be processed before being carried to its
launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Kepler will launch atop a Delta II
rocket.

"An outstanding team of engineers overcame some difficult hurdles to
achieve this considerable milestone," said Ball Aerospace Program
Manager John Troeltzsch. "The culmination of this effort will put a
spectacular mission in orbit designed to increase our understanding of
the cosmos."

Kepler is a NASA Discovery mission. In addition to being the home
organization of the science principal investigator, NASA Ames Research
Center is responsible for the ground system development, mission
operations and science data analysis. Kepler mission development is
managed by JPL. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is responsible for
developing the Kepler flight system and supporting mission operations.

More information about the Kepler mission is at
http://www.nasa.gov/kepler . More information about extrasolar planets
and NASA's planet-finding program is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov
..

Media contacts: Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Michael Mewhinney 650-604-3937
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Michael.mewhinney@xxxxxxxx

2008-240

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