Kepler Spacecraft Arrives

In a clean room at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., workers prepare to rotate NASA’s Kepler spacecraft before it is uncovered and prepared for initial testing.
A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets.
After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be transported to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral where it will be launched atop a Delta II rocket.
Image credit: NASA/Chris Rhodes
Jan. 6, 2009