Kepler

When it comes to space, what goes up must be sturdy, safe and secure if it's to live very long. Satellites must survive the bone-rattling jostle and pressure of launch, and once they reach orbit, they've got to weather the vast temperature changes they experience with every sunrise and sunset. Their skins must be thick enough to survive pummeling by micro-debris, and they'd better have trusty gyroscopes to be able to change directions or keep their balance.

Earth’s twin could be waiting for us hundreds of light-years away. In fact, thousands of Earth doppelgängers may be lurking in the cosmic distance, orbiting stars just like our sun and maybe, just maybe, harboring life of their own. Although telescopes have identified more than 300 planets outside our solar system, most of them are too harsh to host life. One notable exception to the typical “hot Jupiter” model is a rocky Earth-like planet discovered in 2007, dubbed Gliese 581 c.

We´ve never known
more about the universe than we do right
now-and that´s precisely the problem.
Every significant astronomical discovery of
the past 50 years-afterglow from the
big bang, evidence of dark matter,
planets circling distant stars, just to name a few-has helped to create an ever-larger and more perplexing set of cosmic questions: Is there life on those faraway planets? How
did the first stars form after the big bang?