Kepler Space Telescope
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Kepler space telescope. Named after astronomer johannes kepler the spacecraft was launched on march 7 2009 into an earth trailing heliocentric orbit. Get the latest updates on nasa missions watch nasa tv live and learn about our quest to reveal the unknown and benefit all humankind. The kepler space telescope is a retired space telescope launched by nasa to discover earth size planets orbiting other stars.
The principal investigator was william j. Using data from the kepler mission and the extended k2 mission scientists have identified more than 2 800 candidate exoplanets and have confirmed more than 2 600 of these as bona fide planets. It found our galaxy teeming with planets more planets even than the stars and stunned the world with many other first of a kind discoveries.
Nasa s kepler space telescope spent nine years in space collecting an unprecedented dataset for science that has revolutionized our understanding of our place in the cosmos. After nine years in deep space collecting data that revealed our night sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets more planets even than stars nasa s kepler space telescope was retired.