April 15, 2013 J.D. Harrington Headquarters, Washington 202-358-5241 j.d.harrington@xxxxxxxx Michele Johnson Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. 650-604-4789 michele.johnson@xxxxxxxx MEDIA ADVISORY: M13-062 NASA HOSTS MEDIA BRIEFING TO DISCUSS KEPLER PLANETARY DISCOVERY WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a news briefing at 2 p.m. EDT, Thursday, April 18, to announce new discoveries from the agency's Kepler mission. The briefing will be held in the Syvertson Auditorium, Building N-201, at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and be broadcast live on NASA Television and on the agency's website. Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone, which is the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water. Launched in 2009, the Kepler space telescope is detecting planets and planet candidates with a wide range of sizes and orbital distances to help us better understand our place in the galaxy. The briefing participants are: -- Paul Hertz, astrophysics director, NASA Headquarters, Washington -- Roger Hunter, Kepler project manager, Ames -- William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator, Ames -- Thomas Barclay, Kepler scientist, Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, Sonoma, Calif. -- Lisa Kaltenegger, research group leader, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany, and research associate, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass. News media representatives may attend in-person or by teleconference. To register or obtain dial-in information, contact Michele Johnson at 650-604-4789 or michele.johnson@xxxxxxxx by noon EDT Thursday, April 18. To reach Ames, take U.S. Highway 101 to the Moffett Field-NASA Parkway exit and drive east toward the main gate. Media representatives must obtain a badge at the Visitor Badge Office, located at the main gate. News media representatives and the public may submit questions via Twitter to #AskNASA. For NASA TV streaming video, scheduling and downlink information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv The event also will be streamed live on Ustream at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-arc For more information about the Kepler mission and to view the digital press kit, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler -end- To subscribe to the list, send a message to: hqnews-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To remove your address from the list, send a message to: hqnews-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
