2009: Kepler and WISE Seek Answers in the Nearby Milky Way Galaxy

Two space missions in 2009 will seek to answer significant questions about our nearby galaxy in the upcoming year when the spacecraft Kepler launches in March and the Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer [WISE] spacecraft launches in November.

NASA's Kepler mission is designed to search for exoplants within the habital zone of 100,000 stars where liquid water and possibly alien life might exist in the relative nearby region of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The mission will launch March 6th and it is now in the launch campaign at Cape Canaveral, Florida for the four-year mission [vid-1 and vid-2].

The NASA WISE mission is designed to study asteroids, the coolest and dimmest stars, and the most luminous galaxies. WISE will survey the entire sky in a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum called the mid-infrared with far greater sensitivity than any previous mission or program ever has seeking out brown dwarf planets, hundreds of asteroids, and inventory nearby young stars and their dusty disks.

Taken together, the two planned 2009 spacecraft missions will advance planetary science significantly answering critical questions about space in our neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy and perhaps survey nearby asteriod threats.