Kepler Mission and exoplanets,artwork. NASA's Kepler Mission (centre) is a space telescope designed to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. Examples of such planets are shown here,including Earth-like planets,Martian planets,Venusian planets,Jovian planets and Saturnian planets. Kepler's 0.95-metre diameter photometer will scan 100,000 stars in the Milky Way for evidence of Earth-sized terrestrial planets that transit the star's path. The mission,launched in March 2009,is named in honour of German astronomer Johannes Kepler. As of February 2011,over 1000 candidate planets have been discovered |