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George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator 
We're joined now here at the console in the

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Mission Director's Center by Dr. Geoff Marcy,

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he is the Kepler co-investigator from the University of California at Berkeley. And welcome Dr. Marcy. First of all,

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we'd like to know once Kepler's in space and it's doing its mission, where will you be? Where do you watch all of this unfold?

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Dr. Geoff Marcy/University of California-Berkeley Well, I'll be watching from Berkeley and NASA Ames where we'll be taking the data in,

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in huge gulps, hoping to make sense of it to detect the first Earths ever discovered around other stars.

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George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator 
Well, tell us some more now, a little bit about the mission and what's

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going to be coming up as far as what Kepler is going to be seeing, what you'll be seeing.

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Dr. Geoff Marcy/University of 
California-Berkeley Well, Kepler's frankly a 
mission for the ages.

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It is the first telescope capable of detecting Earth-like planets around other stars.

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And, of course, since the time of the Greeks 
-- Aristotle, Democritus -- they pondered 
whether the Earth was unique,

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whether there were other Earths out there,

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whether any of them might be habitable, and indeed whether any other Earths might be inhabited by life, and indeed, intelligent life.

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Course, only in the past decade have 
astronomers detected any planets around 
other stars at all.

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But of course, most of these planets are giant planets -- gaseous,

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made of hydrogen and helium. And, of 
course, such planets really could hardly 
support life.

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So Kepler is the first telescope ever conceived by humanity that can actually detect planets like Earth.

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George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator 
Well, we have some graphics, little 
animations,

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so let's roll through those and you can tell us some of what we're seeing.

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Dr. Geoff Marcy/University of 
California-Berkeley Well,

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Kepler will be searching for planets within our Milky Way galaxy.

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And you can see it depicted here, the Milky 
Way galaxy, of course,

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that we live in contains 200 billion stars -- it's 100,000 light years across.

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And you might imagine if even 1 percent of 
the stars in our Milky Way galaxy contain 
Earths,

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then that means there are billions of Earths just within our

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Milky Way galaxy alone. I think there's another graphic here that shows the field of view of Kepler -- this is very interesting.

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When Kepler goes into an Earth-trailing orbit it will stare toward the constellation Cygnus,

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near the constellation Lyra, continuously for 3.5 years,

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taking repeated pictures of 100,000 stars. And the idea is shown in the next graphic that gives you a feeling for how Kepler works.

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The idea is that Kepler detects Earths by 
watching the stars and they will, of course,

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dim as an Earth-like planet crosses in front of that star,

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blocking some mere 1/100 of 1 percent of the light from the star because Earth is so small.

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So Kepler will detect this dimming every time the Earth-like planet crosses in front of the star, time and time again,

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giving us enormous confidence that the planets Kepler finds are actually Earths.

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George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator 
When will Kepler actually be returning the

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first science that you'll be seeing to get some information?

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Dr. Geoff Marcy/University of 
California-Berkeley Well, we expect the first 
downloads of data to come in about

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May and June, by July we'll have processed enough of it to look for stars that actually dim.

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And then it'll be the job of ground-based telescopes to verify the Earths that Kepler has found and measure their masses.

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And the beauty is that if you can measure the mass of an Earth by the Doppler-shift wobble of the star and Kepler can measure

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the diameter of the Earths, the mass divided by the volume tells you the density.

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And, of course, if we find planets the density 
of rock of which, of course, the Earth, Venus 
and Mars are made,

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you know you've got a rocky planet close kin to our Earth.

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George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator So Kepler's not working by itself. We have ground-based telescopes actually working in

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collaboration with it as part of the overall science that we'll be getting for the mission.

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Dr. Geoff Marcy/University of California-Berkeley That's exactly right. Kepler is enormously valuable by itself,

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but we need about a dozen ground-based telescopes -- indeed, the largest in the world, such as the Lick observatory telescope,

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the Keck observatory telescope in Hawaii, to follow up, to verify the planets and measure their masses.

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George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator Well, Dr. Marcy, thank you very much. And now I know you're looking very much forward to going,

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watching the launch tonight because that's 
certainly historic for your efforts in all of this. 
And our best wishes

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to you and the entire team of scientists here to watch the launch tonight.

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Dr. Geoff Marcy/University of California-Berkeley Thank you. We're all on pins and needles, I can tell you that.

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George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator At T-72 minutes, 18 seconds and counting, this is Delta Launch Control.

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