Kepler launched in March 2009

The IAU General Assembly in Rio may well be the heart of the action in astronomy at the moment, but the rest of the world has not stopped either. Yesterday NASA announced the first results from its planet-hunting satellite Kepler, which was launched in March of this year. As I was holed up at the conference I wasn’t able to follow the news conference, but I gather the results are really excellent and very exciting already at this early stage of the mission. The bottom line: based on first data, Kepler is performing extremely well and is capable of detecting Earth-like exoplanets. This is a major achievement for all scientists and engineers involved, who I am sure will be delighted with these data.

Professor Astronomy in Texas has a full overview of the results presented by NASA, and plenty of expertise to put it all into context. Follow the jump for the full lowdown!

Image: NASA/K. Shiflett