DOI: 10.1126/science.1185402 ISSN:

Kepler Planet-Detection Mission: Introduction and First Results

William J. Borucki, David Koch, Gibor Basri, Natalie Batalha, Timothy Brown, Douglas Caldwell, John Caldwell, Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard, William D. Cochran, Edna DeVore, Edward W. Dunham, Andrea K. Dupree, Thomas N. Gautier, John C. Geary, Ronald Gilliland, Alan Gould, Steve B. Howell, Jon M. Jenkins, Yoji Kondo, David W. Latham, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Søren Meibom, Hans Kjeldsen, Jack J. Lissauer, David G. Monet, David Morrison, Dimitar Sasselov, Jill Tarter, Alan Boss, Don Brownlee, Toby Owen, Derek Buzasi, David Charbonneau, Laurance Doyle, Jonathan Fortney, Eric B. Ford, Matthew J. Holman, Sara Seager, Jason H. Steffen, William F. Welsh, Jason Rowe, Howard Anderson, Lars Buchhave, David Ciardi, Lucianne Walkowicz, William Sherry, Elliott Horch, Howard Isaacson, Mark E. Everett, Debra Fischer, Guillermo Torres, John Asher Johnson, Michael Endl, Phillip MacQueen, Stephen T. Bryson, Jessie Dotson, Michael Haas, Jeffrey Kolodziejczak, Jeffrey Van Cleve, Hema Chandrasekaran, Joseph D. Twicken, Elisa V. Quintana, Bruce D. Clarke, Christopher Allen, Jie Li, Haley Wu, Peter Tenenbaum, Ekaterina Verner, Frederick Bruhweiler, Jason Barnes, Andrej Prsa
  • Multidisciplinary
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Detecting Distant Planets

More than 400 planets have been detected outside the solar system, most of which have masses similar to that of the gas giant planet, Jupiter. Borucki et al. (p. 977 , published online 7 January) summarize the planetary findings derived from the first six weeks of observations with the Kepler mission whose objective is to search for and determine the frequency of Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of other stars. The results include the detection of five new exoplanets, which confirm the existence of planets with densities substantially lower than those predicted for gas giant planets.

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