KSC-2009-1973

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – On Launch Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the engines on United Launch Alliance's Delta II rocket carrying NASA's Kepler spacecraft ignite. Liftoff was on time at 10:49 p.m. EST. Kepler is a spaceborne telescope designed to search the nearby region of our galaxy for Earth-size planets orbiting in the habitable zone of stars like our sun. The habitable zone is the region around a star where temperatures permit water to be liquid on a planet's surface. 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 our galaxy. Photo credit: NASA/Tony Gray