NASA to Announce Latest Kepler Space Telescope Discoveries During Media Teleconference Tuesday

NASA will host a news teleconference at 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 10 to announce the latest discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.

The briefing participants are:

• Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington
• Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at Princeton University in New Jersey
• Natalie Batalha, Kepler mission scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California
• Charlie Sobeck, Kepler/K2 mission manager at Ames

The teleconference audio and visuals will be streamed live at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

When Kepler was launched in March 2009, scientists did not know how common planets were outside our solar system. Thanks to Kepler’s treasure trove of discoveries, astronomers now believe there may be at least one planet orbiting every star in the sky.

Kepler completed its prime mission in 2012, and collected data for an additional year in an extended mission. In 2014, the spacecraft began a new extended mission called K2. K2 continues the search for exoplanets while introducing new research opportunities to study young stars, supernovae and other cosmic phenomenon.

Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

For more information about NASA’s Kepler mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/kepler