The spacecraft launches Friday night to embark on the most exhaustive hunt for a potentially habitable planet beyond our solar system. The first spacecraft dedicated to finding potentially habitable planets beyond our solar system is poised to blast off from Cape Canaveral tonight on a three-year mission to probe 150,000 stars in the most sweeping hunt for Earthlike objects ever undertaken by NASA. Full story:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kepler6-2009mar06,0,5238456.story
* Astronomers Discover Earth-Like Planet Outside Solar System... Scientists from the European Southern Observatory working in Chile have found a new planet outside our solar system that is more like Earth than any other known planet... Like Earth, the new planet "Gliese 581c" orbits its sun in "the habitable zone." The estimated surface temperature is between minus 3 and 40 degrees celsius -- neither too cold nor too hot for life as we know it. This means there could be liquid water on the planet's surface:
http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2009/01/astronomers-discover-earth-like-planet.html* JAPANESE SCIENTISTS EYE MYSTERIOUS "PLANET X"-The researchers at Kobe University in western Japan said calculations using computer simulations led them to conclude it was only a matter of time before the mysterious "Planet X" was found:
http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2008/11/japanese-scientists-eye-mysterious.html