NASA ramping up (literally) to launch the Kepler observatory spacecraft. The Kepler has been strapped to the Delta II rocket which will carry it into space on Jolene Blalock's birthday (also known in some cultures as March 5th). The Kepler's mission: to explore strange new worlds and to seek out new life and new civilizations. Though, it won't be boldly going anywhere most of the time.
(EDIT: Turns out the launch was bumped to March 7th at 3:50 Universal Time (UT), which is both Rachel Weisz and Laura Prepon's birthday, so hey I think we're still in good shape.)
Kepler's mission involves staring at the same spot for 3.5 years, watching a select group of about 100,000 stars, some of which are similar to our Sun. By watching long enough, it can determine which of the stars have planets orbiting it, and how long it takes each planet to make a full orbit. Kepler is looking for planets with Earth-like orbits and a temperature that's right for liquid water - a key component to possible life forms, says NASA; though personally I believe they're neglecting the possible mercury-based life forms out there which will one day invent the Galaxy's finest thermometers.
This potential discovery is a huge deal Humanity, because as it stands nobody has any clue how rare the Earth climate is on a Universal scale. There could be millions and billions of Earth-similar planets out there, or there could be just us. NASA Science Principal Investigator William Borucki had this to say during a CNN video on the Kepler mission objective:
"Kepler is designed to find hundreds of Earth-sized planets if such planets are common around stars, dozens of these planets if they're in a habitable zone. And If we find that many, it certainly will mean that life may well be common throughout our galaxy, because there's an opportunity for life to have a place to evolve. If on the other hand we don't find any, that will be another profound discovery."
So while the eventual results gathered by Kepler will be extremely interesting for humanity to discover, there's one certainty about the observatory's mission. Sitting in empty space, watching the same stars for 3.5 years, the Kepler observatory spacecraft will without a doubt have the most boring space mission of all time. Meanwhile, the Hubble has happily cruised over Earth since 1990, taking photographs and basically sight-seeing the galaxy for the past 18 years. Some telescopes get to have all the fun.
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