In March 2011, NASA launched a space instrument who's mission is to find other Earth-like planets in our Milky Way galaxy. This spacecraft, Kepler, contains a relatively small telescope which tracks stars and specifically examines the brightness of them. When a star's brightness is briefly absent, Kepler takes note and monitors that star more because a break in the brightness means that a planet is crossing that path of light.
One of those planets has been found to be in the habitable zone to a star, just as our E
arth is to the sun. Kepler-22b has a radius 2.5 times that of Earth's, a year that is 290 days, and temperatures that are not much different then Earth. This makes it possible for water to stay at the liquid state. It is 600 light years away from Earth. Does anyone know how many miles that is? If the speed of light is 3.0 x 108 m/s, how could you figure out the miles?The Kepler Mission was named after scientist Johannes Kepler. What did this scientist discover? Why do you think they named the mission after him?
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