MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler mission, scheduled to launch in 2009, has survived an extreme temperature test. The thermal vacuum test is part of a series of environmental tests ...

Mission managers say they expect Kepler to run out of fuel in the next few months, putting an end to nearly a decade of planet-spotting. Share on Facebook (opens in a new window) Share on X (opens in ...

Astronomers poring over four years of data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft have discovered a star that’s 11.2 billion years old and has at least five Earth-size planets. “We thus show that Earth-size ...

AMES, Iowa – An international team of astronomers has used nearly three years of high precision data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft to make the first observations of a planet outside our solar system ...

When the Kepler space telescope malfunctioned last spring, it looked as though its incredibly successful planet-hunting mission might be over—and NASA made that sad fact official a few months later.

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 ...

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has spotted 503 new potential alien worlds, some of which may be capable of supporting life as we know it. "Some of these new planet candidates are small and some reside in ...

Kepler Communications has committed to launch its first tranche of ten optical data relay satellites in January 2026, kicking ...