NASA will host a news teleconference at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) Thursday, April 17, to announce a new discovery made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope. <\/p>\n
The journal Science has embargoed the findings until the time of the news conference. <\/p>\n
The briefing participants are: <\/p>\n
-- Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet exploration program scientist, NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington <\/p>\n
-- Elisa Quintana, research scientist, SETI Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. <\/p>\n
-- Tom Barclay, research scientist, Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at Ames <\/p>\n
-- Victoria Meadows, professor of astronomy at the University of Washington, Seattle, and principal investigator for the Virtual Planetary Laboratory, a team in the NASA Astrobiology Institute at Ames <\/p>\n
Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone -- the range of distance from a star in which the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might sustain liquid water. The telescope has since detected planets and planet candidates spanning a wide range of sizes and orbital distances, including those in the habitable zone. These findings have led to a better understanding of our place in the galaxy. <\/p>\n
For dial-in information, media should e-mail their name, affiliation and telephone number to J.D. Harrington atj.d.harrington@nasa.govno<\/a> later than 9 a.m. PDT (noon EDT) Thursday. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n See original here: <\/p>\n NASA Hosts Media Teleconference to Announce Latest Kepler Discovery<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASA will host a news teleconference at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m Continue reading