NASA's Kepler Announcing Newly Confirmed Planets

Dec. 18, 2011

Trent J. Perrotto
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0321
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov

Michele Johnson
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-4789
michele.johnson@nasa.gov

MEDIA ADVISORY: M11-254

NASA'S KEPLER ANNOUNCING NEWLY CONFIRMED PLANETS

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a news teleconference at 1 p.m. EST,
Tuesday, Dec. 20, announcing new discoveries by the Kepler mission.

Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets
in or near the "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system
where liquid water can exist on the surface of an orbiting planet.
Although additional observations will be needed to reach that
milestone, Kepler is detecting planets and possible candidates with a
wide range of sizes and orbital distances to help scientists better
understand our place in the galaxy.

The briefing participants are:

-- Nick Gautier, Kepler project scientist, NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.
-- Francois Fressin, lead author, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
-- David Charbonneau, professor of astronomy, Harvard University
-- Linda Elkins-Tanton, director of the Carnegie Institution for
Science's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington.

For dial-in information, media representatives should e-mail their
name, affiliation and telephone number to Trent Perrotto at:
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov.

For live audio of the teleconference, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett
Field, Calif., manages Kepler's ground system development, mission
operations and science data analysis. JPL managed the Kepler
mission's development.

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the
Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of
Colorado in Boulder.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and
distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery
Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the
agency's headquarters in Washington.

For information about the Kepler Mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

-end-

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