Print Email Font ResizeBoulder-built Kepler spacecraft discovers first Earth-sized planet outside our solar systemBy Sharon Noguchi, McClatchy TribunePosted:
01/10/2011 06:10:08 PM MSTAn artist's rendering of the Kepler spacecraft. (NASA)SAN JOSE, Calif.  -  The place is inhospitable, with molten temperatures and possibly clouds of melted silicon. But a discovery across the galaxy is giving hope to searchers of intelligent life. A team led by NASA Ames researchers has confirmed the existence of the first rocky planet outside our solar system. Kepler-10b is closest in size to Earth of 519 extra-solar planets discovered so far. It is about 1½ times the Earth's diameter and speeding around a star similar to our sun in the constellation Cygnus, about 560 light-years away."It's unquestionably a rocky world orbiting a star outside our solar system," said Natalie Batalha, deputy science team leader for the Kepler Mission at NASA Ames. She and about 50 other scientists published their discovery Monday in the Astrophysical Journal.The planet was found by the Kepler spacecraft, which was built by Boulder's Ball Aerospace and is controlled by students at the University of Colorado."Today's announcement of a rocky planet slightly larger then Earth is incredible and brings us one step closer to finding a planet with the ability to have liquid water," said John Troeltzsch, Kepler program manager at Ball. "Kepler continues to make historic discoveries and the Ball team is incredibly proud to have built and operate the spacecraft."Unlike the majority of the so-called exoplanets detected so far, Kepler-10b is solid and not gaseous.Advertisement
Its size and composition are significant because an Earth-sized, solid planet is more likely to harbor water, essential for life. Kepler-10b, which is 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun, is too hot to sustain life. But it still has astronomers excited. And its discovery, announced Monday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, is a major dividend paid by the Kepler spacecraft, launched in March 2009.From its lonely orbit around the sun and with its view undistorted by the Earth's atmosphere, Kepler fixes its meter-wide lens on 150,000 stars, measuring light every 30 minutes. Scientists pore over the data, searching for signs of planet transit.In July 2009, Batalha's team members noticed those signs and stepped up observations. They ordered the spacecraft to gather data once a minute, to better assess the star Kepler-10 because they needed more information."Other astrophysical signals in nature can masquerade as a planet transit," said Batalha, who also teaches physics and astronomy at San Jose State University.They gathered evidence of star turmoil, such as earthquakes, revealing the star's structure and properties. "Stars kind of vibrate and ring like a bell," said Edna DeVore, co-investigator for the Kepler mission.The team reserved precious time on the Keck telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea to help disentangle the signals.By September they knew that their planet was rocky.Was it exciting?"Do you want me to tell you how high I was jumping?" Batalha said. In months of combing through data to watching signs steadily emerging, she said, "It was a joy to watch."While Kepler-10b is "in our solar neighborhood," Batalha said, it would be premature to make travel plans. First, its distance from the Earth means that even whizzing there at the speed of light would take 560 years.The planet's day side is significantly hotter than molten lava, Batalha said. Its night side is cooler, but probably still has hostile temperatures and perhaps toxic dust. The planet circles with the same side facing its star, similar to the way our moon orbits Earth, but in less time than one Earth day.While scientists mine the trove of data, the essential question remains. "We want to know if we're alone in our galaxy," Batalha said. "This is one step in that direction." Print Email Font ResizeReturn to Top RELATED