The mission would take a statistical sample of stars to figure out how common planets – and specifically, Earth-like planets – are in the universe. The Kepler telescope launched on the early ...

Kepler, launched in 2009, has already discovered more than 2,700 potential new planets, 132 of which have been identified. The first wheel failure happened last year, but the spacecraft could ...

NASA on Friday launched a telescope that will search our corner of the Milky Way galaxy for Earth-like planets. The Kepler spacecraft blasted into space on top of a Delta II rocket from Cape ...