Exoplanet orbiting close to sun—NASA’s Kepler space telescope's demonstrating the extraordinary scientific capabilities

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NASA's new exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope has detected the atmosphere of a well-known giant gas planet, demonstrating the telescope's extraordinary scientific capabilities. This discovery will be published on Friday, 7^th August, in the journal Science.

This find is based on a relatively short 10 days of test data collected before the official start of science operations. Kepler was launched on 6^th March, 2009, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. This observation demonstrates the extremely high precision of the measurements made by the telescope, even before its calibration and data analysis software were finished.

"As NASA's first exoplanets mission, Kepler has made a remarkable entrance on the planet-hunting scene," said Mr. Jon Morse, Director of the Science Mission Directorate's Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Detecting this planet's atmosphere in just the first 10 days of data is only an experience of things to come and the planet hunt is on!"

For further more information please visit NASA Satellites.