Word: orbital
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Borucki heads the Kepler Mission, a space-based planet-hunting telescope that went into solar orbit last spring to search for distant worlds like our own. While the first five worlds detected are nothing like Earth, nobody expected them to be. What's important, Borucki declared, was that "these five new exoplanets come from the first six weeks of data." An additional eight months of Kepler observations are already in the can and awaiting analysis, meaning many more planets are undoubtedly lurking on hard drives at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, where Kepler is headquartered. "We're going...
...planetary finds are unlikely to be exact copies of Earth, and for a very simple reason. Kepler spots faraway planets by watching them transit, or pass in front of, their stars, blocking out a little bit of light and making the star slightly dimmer. The five planets just announced orbit very close to their suns, which is the reason they're so ridiculously hot. That proximity also means they move very fast, completing three or even more transits in the first round of observations - which is just the kind of data stream the Kepler team prefers. "We want...