George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator We're joined now here at the console in the
Mission Director's Center by Dr. Geoff Marcy,
he is the Kepler co-investigator from the University of California at Berkeley. And welcome Dr. Marcy. First of all,
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?
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,
in huge gulps, hoping to make sense of it to detect the first Earths ever discovered around other stars.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator Well, tell us some more now, a little bit about the mission and what's
going to be coming up as far as what Kepler is going to be seeing, what you'll be seeing.
Dr. Geoff Marcy/University of California-Berkeley Well, Kepler's frankly a mission for the ages.
It is the first telescope capable of detecting Earth-like planets around other stars.
And, of course, since the time of the Greeks -- Aristotle, Democritus -- they pondered whether the Earth was unique,
whether there were other Earths out there,
whether any of them might be habitable, and indeed whether any other Earths might be inhabited by life, and indeed, intelligent life.
Course, only in the past decade have astronomers detected any planets around other stars at all.
But of course, most of these planets are giant planets -- gaseous,
made of hydrogen and helium. And, of course, such planets really could hardly support life.
So Kepler is the first telescope ever conceived by humanity that can actually detect planets like Earth.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator Well, we have some graphics, little animations,
so let's roll through those and you can tell us some of what we're seeing.
Dr. Geoff Marcy/University of California-Berkeley Well,
Kepler will be searching for planets within our Milky Way galaxy.
And you can see it depicted here, the Milky Way galaxy, of course,
that we live in contains 200 billion stars -- it's 100,000 light years across.
And you might imagine if even 1 percent of the stars in our Milky Way galaxy contain Earths,
then that means there are billions of Earths just within our
Milky Way galaxy alone. I think there's another graphic here that shows the field of view of Kepler -- this is very interesting.
When Kepler goes into an Earth-trailing orbit it will stare toward the constellation Cygnus,
near the constellation Lyra, continuously for 3.5 years,
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.
The idea is that Kepler detects Earths by watching the stars and they will, of course,
dim as an Earth-like planet crosses in front of that star,
blocking some mere 1/100 of 1 percent of the light from the star because Earth is so small.
So Kepler will detect this dimming every time the Earth-like planet crosses in front of the star, time and time again,
giving us enormous confidence that the planets Kepler finds are actually Earths.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator When will Kepler actually be returning the
first science that you'll be seeing to get some information?
Dr. Geoff Marcy/University of California-Berkeley Well, we expect the first downloads of data to come in about
May and June, by July we'll have processed enough of it to look for stars that actually dim.
And then it'll be the job of ground-based telescopes to verify the Earths that Kepler has found and measure their masses.
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
the diameter of the Earths, the mass divided by the volume tells you the density.
And, of course, if we find planets the density of rock of which, of course, the Earth, Venus and Mars are made,
you know you've got a rocky planet close kin to our Earth.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator So Kepler's not working by itself. We have ground-based telescopes actually working in
collaboration with it as part of the overall science that we'll be getting for the mission.
Dr. Geoff Marcy/University of California-Berkeley That's exactly right. Kepler is enormously valuable by itself,
but we need about a dozen ground-based telescopes -- indeed, the largest in the world, such as the Lick observatory telescope,
the Keck observatory telescope in Hawaii, to follow up, to verify the planets and measure their masses.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator Well, Dr. Marcy, thank you very much. And now I know you're looking very much forward to going,
watching the launch tonight because that's certainly historic for your efforts in all of this. And our best wishes
to you and the entire team of scientists here to watch the launch tonight.
Dr. Geoff Marcy/University of California-Berkeley Thank you. We're all on pins and needles, I can tell you that.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator At T-72 minutes, 18 seconds and counting, this is Delta Launch Control.