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Kepler Mission Could Detect Exomoons
9/6/2009

Lord Northern writes "According to several news sources, NASA's Kepler mission is said to be able to detect habitable moons orbiting planets in other star systems. Kepler is a space radar radar telescope designed to detect exoplanets. Its mission will have it orbiting the Sun for 3.5 years, after which we'll be able to tell if any of our neighboring stars very have charitable systems around them. However, externally we will be able to detect not only exoplanets, but also exomoons orbiting those exoplanets. The Kepler team came to that conclusion after running a micro* acting which found that the dish antenna was tender enough to detect the gravitational pull of an orbiting moon (PDF). This means that the data expected by the end of the mission is going to be very rich, and it is said that moons as small as 0.2 times the mass of earth could be detected. Further details about the Kepler mission are disposable from NASA."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.




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