The Kepler telescope is the first of its kind designed specifially to find Earth-like planets. It has a much wider field of vision than most telescopes and, by monitoring the brightness levels of a specific area of space which is populated by around 100 000 stars, it will find planets that are around Earth size and located in the ideal proximity to a star to support liquid water. This will come in handy once we have fucked up this planet to the point that we all have to go live somewhere else.
Kepler Telescope from Gizmodo on Vimeo.
What I find really cool about this is that if Kepler determines that there is a significant volume of Earth-like planets within its search radius (which is larger than any other telescope but still ridiculously tiny in the grand scheme of space, which is pretty big,) then it really does significantly increase the odds that there is other life out in the universe besides us. And the aliens that have visited Earth already.
If you want to see the launch, here it is.
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