Edge to Sunshine!

The broad, beautiful wings of a space shuttle are the station's awesome solar arrays.

A very easy solution to where space shuttles get their energy from is our “Sun” or Solar Energy. But not all spacecrafts linger near earth where there is abundant sunlight. That might be a major hurdle for Scientists to explore areas of space from where our Sun is not bright enough to power the spacecraft. Space scientists call it the edge of sunshine.

Solution – Powerful solar cells that can convert each photon of light into energy need to be developed. Currently we have cells that convert 14% of light into energy. Most recent ones can convert 30% of light into energy… what we are looking for distant space explorations should be at-least of the cadre of 90% conversion. Just incase you are wondering… Why not carry batteries instead? It’s the weight of the shuttle… It should not increase.

Extraterrestrial life???

Where else can life exist other than earth? Thats exactly what Kepler is all set to find out. Its mission is to find planets like our Earth that revolve around stars like our Sun. It will mostly focus on warm zones where water can be maintained without evaporating or solidifying as Ice on the surface of the planets. How will Kepler do this...? Very simple!

Keplers position in Space will allow it to monitor a patch of space for more than 3.5 yrs. That patch will have around 100,000 stars. kepler will pick up sun like stars for its observations. It will constantly look for any gradual dimming and brightning of the star...the reason most likely being, a planet coming in between the star under observation and Kepler itself.

Launch date/time: 2009 March 6 at 10:48 pm EST.

Courtesy: nasa.gov