Are we alone in the universe? Do other Earth-like planets orbit other stars in the Milky Way? In 2009, NASA launched the Kepler space telescope to answer these questions. What they found contradicted centuries of theoretical and observational work and transformed our understanding of planets, planetary systems, and the stars they orbit.
Kepler discovered a bewildering variety of celestial bodies, including rocky planets being vaporized by the intense heat of their host star; super-Earths and sub-Neptunes, with properties simultaneously similar and different from both planets; gas giants several times the size and mass of Jupiter; and planets orbiting in stellar systems that had only been imagined in science fiction.
Jason Steffen, a former member of the science team for NASA’s Kepler mission, offers a unique inside account of the team’s work, mapping its progress of the mission from the launch of the rocket that carried Kepler into space to the revelations of the data that began to flow to the supercomputer back at NASA—evidence of strange new worlds unlike anything found in our own solar system.
Steffen’s book, Hidden in the Heavens: How the Kepler Mission’s Quest for New Planets Changed How We View Our Own (Princeton University Press), is available for purchase.
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