The search for habitable planets began tonight, as a Delta II rocket launched the Ball Aerospace-built Kepler spacecraft toward an orbit from which a huge camera and telescope will scan 100,000 Sun-like stars for signs of life.
NASA officials launched the 3-1/2-year mission at 8:49 p.m. from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The hope is that Kepler will spot an Earth-like planet circling a distant star.
“We aren’t looking for ET,” said William Borucki, the project’s lead scientist. “We are looking for ET’s home.”
Although Kepler is searching the far corners of the galaxy, it is anchored firmly in Colorado.
The $508 million spacecraft was built by Boulder-based Ball Aerospace Technologies Corp. and launched on a rocket from Centennial-based United Launch Alliance.
The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado-Boulder that will handle the day-to-day control of the spacecraft.
The mission will pick out stars similar to our Sun and then — using a 15-foot-tall telescope attached to a big mirror and the biggest digital camera ever sent into space — look for tiny blips tracking across the stars.
“It is like looking at a highway a mile a way with thousands of headlights and trying to see a gnat slowly crossing one headlight,” Borucki said.
