The reaction wheels, shown in this diagram, are the source of Kepler's woes. (NASA graphic) NASA engineers have successfully transitioned its planet-seeking Kepler telescope to "point rest state" -- ...

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – How cool would it be to have your name on board the spacecraft that discovers the first known Earth-like planet beyond our solar system? Well, here’s your chance. NASA today ...

Relative sizes of the newly discovered habitable-zone planets and Earth. Left to right: Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Earth (except for Earth, these are artists' renditions). Image credit: ...

NASA’s Kepler mission successfully launched into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II at 10:49 p.m. EST, Friday. Kepler is designed to find the ...

The 42 CCDs of the Kepler focal plane are approximately one square foot in size. There are four fine guidance modules in the corners of the focal plane that are much smaller CCDs compared to the 42 ...

NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, which shut its powerful eye nearly five years ago, continued finding exoplanets even while taking its final breaths. A team of astrophysicists and citizen ...

Natalie Batalha, a former project scientist for NASA’s Kepler Mission, will lead the audience on a journey to the stars, providing insight into future missions to search for lives beyond the Earth in ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American The prolific planet-hunting spacecraft that ...

Scientists using NASA's Kepler spacecraft (see photo) to look for planets around other stars have been “surprised by the universe,” and the value of those surprises has earned the mission a four-year ...

Through the looking glass: Observations from NASA's Kepler mission ended in 2018, but scientists are still pouring over what it recorded. That data can include information about new solar systems and ...

Astronomers have found three planets orbiting far-off stars that are close to Earth-sized and in the "habitable zone": a distance from their suns that makes the planets' surfaces neither too hot nor ...