NASA’s $600-million planet-hunting Kepler mission successfully launched last week.

“Kepler is a critical component in NASA’s broader efforts to ultimately find and study planets where Earth-like conditions may be present,” said Jon Morse, NASA’s astrophysics director (press release). “The planetary census Kepler takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds around nearby stars.”

You can read more about Kepler in the Nature News story Looking for worlds like this one.

Image: NASA