The Kepler space telescope has captured its first images of a portion of sky with 14 million stars, with about 100,000 that could be candidates for hunting Earth-like planets during its 3 1/2-year mission.
Two “incredible” milestones have been achieved in the past few days, said John Troeltzsch, Kepler program manager for Boulder-based Ball Aerospace & Technologies, which built the $591 million spacecraft.
Last Friday, Kepler was able to finely focus on a patch of sky on its first attempt, which Troeltzsch said makes it one of the most precisely pointed astronomical telescopes in space.
Then it turned to collecting data so scientists could evaluate the optical performance of the photometer. Troeltzsch said the test results indicate no on-orbit adjustment will be needed.
In addition to Ball, Kepler is being controlled on a day-to- day basis by University of Colorado at Boulder students. It was launched March 6 by United Launch Alliance of Centennial.
