NASA Hosts Media Teleconference to Announce Latest Kepler Discoveries

[NASA News Releases <hqnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

July 20, 2015  MEDIA ADVISORY M15-110 NASA Hosts Media Teleconference to Announce Latest Kepler Discoveries NASA will host a news teleconference at noon EDT Thursday, July 23 to announce new discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope. The first exoplanet orbiting another star like our sun was discovered in 1995. Exoplanets, especially small Earth-size worlds, belonged within the realm of science fiction just 21 years ago. Today, and thousands of discoveries later, astronomers are on the cusp of finding something people have dreamed about for thousands of years -- another Earth. The briefing participants are: John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California Jeff Coughlin, Kepler research scientist at SETI Institute in Mountain View, California Didier Queloz, professor of astrophysics at Cambridge University, United Kingdom Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to detect Earth-size planets orbiting distant stars in or near the habitable zone -- the range of distance from a star in which the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might sustain liquid water. The telescope has since confirmed more than 1,000 planets and more than 3,000 planet candidates spanning a wide range of sizes and orbital distances, including those in the habitable zone. For dial-in information, media should e-mail their name, affiliation and telephone number to Felicia Chou at felicia.chou@xxxxxxxx no later than 10 a.m. Thursday. Questions can be submitted on Twitter during the teleconference using the hashtag #askNASA. The teleconference audio and visuals will be streamed live at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio For more information about NASA’s Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler -end- NASA news releases and other information are available automatically by sending an e-mail message with the subject line subscribe to hqnews-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. To unsubscribe from the list, send an e-mail message with the subject line unsubscribe to hqnews-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.