NASA Launch Tonight!

I thought I'd post this in case there any of my readers are solar system enthusiasts like my son Justin is! Tonight at 10:49 pm, EST NASA will launch The Kepler spacecraft and it's Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Florida. You can follow the mission here.

From the NASA website:

The Kepler spacecraft will watch a patch of space for 3.5 years or more for signs of Earth-sized planets moving around stars similar to the sun. The patch that Kepler will watch contains about 100,000 stars like the sun. Using special detectors similar to those used in digital cameras, Kepler will look for slight dimming in the stars as planets pass between the star and Kepler. The Kepler's place in space will allow it to watch the same stars constantly throughout its mission, something observatories like Hubble cannot do.