Article Posted on : - Feb 28, 2009

Artist's concept of Kepler with distant solar system. NASA image

WASHINGTON (BNS): NASA's Kepler telescope launch slated for March 5, has been postponed to March 6. It will be launched aboard Delta II rocket from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. According to NASA, there are two launch windows, from 10:49 - 10:52 pm and 11:13 - 11:16 pm EST.

Kepler’s original March 5 target launch date was moved by a day to conduct more tests. The US Air Force, which manages the eastern launch range still, has to confirm the March 6 launch date. NASA said that Kepler's Flight Readiness Review will take place on Monday, March 2.

According to the premier space agency, engineers are reviewing all common hardware between the Delta II rocket carrying the Kepler telescope and the Taurus XL launch vehicle. Earlier this week, Taurus carrying NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory failed to reach the orbit. Managers want to avoid a similar situation, NASA said.

Kepler is a space borne telescope designed to search the nearby region of the galaxy for Earth-size planets orbiting in the habitable zone of stars like the sun. The habitable zone is the region around a star where temperatures permit water to be liquid on a planet's surface.

We all know liquid water is essential for the existence of life. The vast majority of the approximately 300 planets known to orbit other stars are much larger than Earth, and none is believed to be habitable. The challenge for Kepler is to look at a large number of stars in order to statistically estimate the total number of Earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars in the habitable zone. Kepler will survey more than 100,000 stars in the galaxy, NASA said.