It has been almost six months since 16-year-old Abby Sunderland’s 40-foot vessel, Wild Eyes, was damaged in a storm, leaving her stranded in the middle of the Indian Ocean. But today, she finally got a chance to meet the people who developed the technology used to save her life.

Abby visited NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Oct. 25 to meet Search and Rescue Manager Dave Affens and a team of engineers. He and his team developed the Search and Rescue Satellite (SARSAT) technologies that contributed to her rescue. “Without NASA technology, she may have lost her life,” Affens said. “This case was more interesting than most because we contributed to every aspect of it.

“The system is great, super actually,” Sunderland said about the search-and-rescue technology that pinpointed her exact location during the aggressive storm.

After giving a presentation about her extraordinary journey from Marina Del Ray, Calif., to her dismasting 2,000 miles from the nearest land, Sunderland took questions from the engineering team and a group of congressional staffers, who were also in attendance, regarding the moments that lead up to her rescue and the safety measures and devices she used during her ordeal. In addition, Affens explained in detail to Sunderland and the group how SARSAT technology operates.

“We developed the concept of detecting distress signals by the satellite, relaying it to the ground stations where the locations were calculated,” Affens explained. “We then launched the distress-detection device on a NOAA weather satellite, tested the concept, and approved the system for operational use.

Currently, the SARSAT system has saved more than 205 lives in the United States this year alone. However, Affens and his team are developing new technology that will detect distress signals in less than five minutes, a process made possible by placing repeater technology on the Air Force’s network of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. The current system, which places the technology on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite or GOES (which alerts) and the Polar Operational Environmental Satellite or POES (which provides the location of the distressed) could take up to an hour or more depending on the location of the satellite.

Sunderland's signal reached an Indian satellite (INSAT) and two NOAA weather satellites that were launched by NASA and used NASA technology to pinpoint her location less than an hour later.

“It was a real surprise when the airbus flew over me. I wasn’t expecting it, I was expecting it to be weeks,” she said about the amount of time it took for her rescue to begin. “When you set off your beacon, you know someone is going to hear you, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to be helped. But I don’t think it could have been done any faster,” she added.

Also critical to her rescue was a small, yellow device that Microwave Monolithics Inc. (MMInc.) in Simi Valley, Calif., had developed under a NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program award. The MicroPLB Type GXL handheld device -- about the size of a BlackBerry -- emitted an emergency distress signal picked up by a SARSAT satellite orbiting 22,500 miles up in space. The satellite also was equipped with NASA-developed repeater technology that then relayed the signal to the United States via the international satellite-aided search and rescue network now comprised of 40 participating nations.

The company’s president, Daniel Ch’en, had given Sunderland the beacon before she attempted to sail the world solo and non-stop, a record previously held by her older brother, Zac. “I wasn’t expecting her to use it, and I was hoping she wouldn’t have to, but I knew this would be the last line of safety [if needed],” he added.

The company originally developed the device for the U.S. government. It is the only sub-miniature PLB certified by the international satellite-based search and rescue community. It operates for a minimum of 48 hours after the user activates the emergency signal. These extra hours are vital given that most rescue teams cannot reach the individual until after a storm subsides, which can be more than a day or two. In Sunderland’s case, the boat sent to rescue her arrived two days after she had activated her device. Most PLBs, in general, are not made for 48-hour operation.

Because Sunderland used the device correctly and made a point to register the beacon with NOAA (adding personal and contact information), the U.S. Coast Guard’s Pacific Area Command in Alameda, Calif., was able to contact her parents in less than 10 minutes.

“We couldn’t ask for a better scenario,” said U.S. Coast Guard’s Adolfo Viezca, also in attendance. “When beacons aren’t registered and I’m on the receiving end, I don’t know who you are, where you are and I end up with a quagmire.”

Sunderland isn’t discouraged by her ordeal. She still plans on sailing the world solo, carrying the beacon and relying on NASA technology of course. “Overall, it’s the best experience of my life,” she said.

After meeting with Affens and his team, Sunderland was able to enjoy the other revolutionary science and technological developments at Goddard. Center Director Rob Strain presented her with a glass globe with an image of the Hubble Space Telescope emblazoned inside as a keepsake. In addition to enjoying the Visitors Center exhibits, including the Science On a Sphere globe, Sunderland visited the Earth Science and LRO control centers, and the Spacecraft Test & Integration Facilities.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/features/sunderland-visit.html

Hinode has shown us complex structures in the solar chromosphere, once thought to be static, these move and twist with time.

These prominences were observed on the southwestern limb of the Sun on April 24, 2007 in the light of Hydrogen-alpha, at a wavelength of 656.3 nm, which is in the red part of the visible spectrum. Hinode observations of such prominences have shown that these phenomena are not simple or static. High-resolution Hinode images have revealed plumes rising from the prominence base, streams of plasma that rain back down, and complex vortices. The large structure to the right in the images is approximately 36,000 km (22,000 mi) across, just slightly less than the circumference of Earth.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/chromosphere.html

Fast-growing sunspot 1112 is crackling with solar flares. So far, none of the blasts has hurled a substantial CME, or coronal mass ejection, toward Earth. In addition, a vast filament of magnetism is cutting across the sun's southern hemisphere. This filament is so large it spans a distance greater than the separation of Earth and the moon. A bright 'hot spot' just north of the filament's midpoint is UV radiation from sunspot 1112. The proximity is no coincidence; the filament appears to be rooted in the sunspot below. If the sunspot flares, it could cause the entire structure to erupt. Thus far, none of the flares has destabilized the filament.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1786.html

Found among the Small Magellanic Cloud's clusters and nebulae NGC 346 is a star-forming region about 200 light-years across, pictured above by the Hubble Space Telescope. A satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a wonder of the southern sky, a mere 210,000 light-years distant in the constellation of the Toucan. Exploring NGC 346, astronomers have identified a population of embryonic stars strung along the dark, intersecting dust lanes visible here on the right. Still collapsing within their natal clouds, the stellar infants' light is reddened by the intervening dust. A small, irregular galaxy, the SMC represents a type of galaxy more common in the early Universe. But these small galaxies are thought to be a building blocks for the larger galaxies present today. Within the SMC, stellar nurseries like NGC 346 also are thought to be similar to those found in the early universe.

This image, like many Hubble images, has a curious stair-step shape. These images come from a scientific instrument called the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, or WFPC2 -- which was removed from the telescope in mid-2009. It is WFPC2’s unique design that underlies the oddly-shaped images in Hubble’s portfolio.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1783.html

Like brush strokes on a canvas, ridges of color seem to flow across the Lagoon Nebula, a canvas nearly 3 light-years wide. The colors map emission from ionized gas in the nebula were recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Also known as M8, the nebula is a star-forming region in the constellation Sagittarius. Hubble's remarkably sharp, close-up view reveals undulating shapes sculpted by the energetic light and winds from the region's new born stars. Of course, the Lagoon Nebula is a popular target for earthbound skygazers, too.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1782.html

The Sculptor galaxy is shown in different infrared hues, in this new mosaic from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The main picture is a composite of infrared light captured with all four of the space telescope's infrared detectors.

The red image at bottom right shows the galaxy's active side. Infant stars are heating up their dusty cocoons, particularly in the galaxy's core, making the Sculptor galaxy burst with infrared light. This light -- color-coded red in this view -- was captured using WISE's longest-wavelength, 22-micron detector. The dusty burst of stars is so intense in the core that it generates diffraction spikes. Diffraction spikes are telescope artifacts normally seen only around very bright stars.

The green image at center right reveals the galaxy's emerging young stars, concentrated in the core and spiral arms. Ultraviolet light from these hot stars is being absorbed by tiny dust or soot particles left over from their formation, making the particles glow with infrared light that has been color-coded green in this view. WISE can see this light with a detector designed to capture wavelengths of 12 microns.

The blue image at top right was taken with the two shortest-wavelength detectors on WISE (3.4 and 4.6 microns). It shows stars of all ages, which can be found not just in the core and spiral arms, but throughout the galaxy.

The Sculptor galaxy, or NGC 253, was discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel, a sister and collaborator of the discoverer of infrared light, Sir William Herschel. It was named after the constellation in which it is found, and is part of a cluster of galaxies known as the Sculptor group. The Sculptor galaxy can be seen by observers in the southern hemisphere with a pair of good binoculars.

NGC 253 is an active galaxy, which means that a significant fraction of its energy output does not come from normal populations of stars within the galaxy. The extraordinarily high amount of star formation occurring in the nucleus of this galaxy has led astronomers to classify it as a "starburst" galaxy. At a distance of approximately 10.5 million light-years away, NGC 253 is the closest starburst galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy. However, the starburst alone cannot explain all the activity observed in the nucleus. One strong possibility is that a giant black hole lurks at the heart of it all, similar to the one that lies at the center of the Milky Way.

In late September of this year, after surveying the sky about one-and-a-half times, WISE exhausted its supply of the frozen coolant needed to chill its longest-wavelength detectors -- the 12- and 22-micron channels. The satellite is continuing to survey the sky with its two remaining detectors, focusing primarily on asteroids and comets.

For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-336

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced Tuesday the selection of Leland D. Melvin as the agency's new associate administrator for education, effective immediately. He succeeds James L. Stofan, who had served in an acting capacity since the spring.

Since April 2010, Melvin has been assigned to the Office of Education at Headquarters leading the Education Design Team. His job was to develop a strategy to improve NASA's education offerings and to assist the agency in establishing goals, structures, processes and evaluation techniques to implement a sustainable and innovative science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education program. He also served as the partnership development manager for the agency's new Summer of Innovation education initiative, aimed at engaging middle school students in STEM activities during the summer break.

"I am delighted to have Leland lead the Office of Education at a time when engaging more students in STEM-related studies and careers is so critical -- not only to NASA but to our nation," Bolden said. "With his dedication and passion, I know we will have a bright future in education under his leadership."

"I also want to thank Jim Stofan for the outstanding job he has done leading the Office of Education since April," Bolden added. "He launched several key new education programs during his tenure and will continue to be a valued asset as he resumes his previous role as deputy associate administrator."

As associate administrator, Melvin will be responsible for the development and implementation of the agency's education programs that strengthen student involvement and public awareness about NASA's scientific goals and missions.

"My passion for education was inspired by my parents, who were both middle school teachers," Melvin said. "I witnessed the direct impact that educators can have in a community and on an individual's destiny. NASA's people, programs and resources are unparalleled. Our unique assets are poised to engage students, to captivate their imagination and to encourage their pursuit of STEM-related studies that are so vital to their future. This is an exciting challenge and I am ready to work with Administrator Bolden, my colleagues at NASA, our partners, and students across the country to usher in a new era of opportunity to inspire that next generation of explorers."

Melvin joined NASA in 1989 as an aerospace research engineer at the agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. He joined the astronaut corps in 1998 and has served as a mission specialist on two space shuttle missions: STS-122 in 2008 and STS-129 in 2009. He has logged more than 565 hours in space. In 2003, Melvin co-managed the former Educator Astronaut Program, which recruited teachers to become fully-trained astronauts in an effort to connect space exploration with students across the country.

Melvin earned a bachelor of science in chemistry from the University of Richmond, where he also excelled as a wide receiver for the Spiders’ football team. He was drafted into the National Football League by the Detroit Lions in 1986 and also spent time with the Dallas Cowboys and the Toronto Argonauts. After injuries sidelined his football career, he returned to academia and earned his master’s degree in materials science engineering from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

His recreational interests include photography, piano, reading, music, cycling, tennis, and snowboarding. He also loves walking his dogs, Jake and Scout.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/about/melvin_aa.html

President Barack Obama signs the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010 in the Oval Office, Monday, Oct. 11, 2010.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1779.html

The Soyuz TMA-01M rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, Oct. 8, 2010 carrying Expedition 25 Soyuz Commander Alexander Kaleri of Russia, NASA Flight Engineer Scott J. Kelly and Russian Flight Engineer Oleg Skripochka to the International Space Station.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1778.html

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of the large asteroid Vesta that will help refine plans for the Dawn spacecraft's rendezvous with Vesta in July 2011.

Scientists have constructed a video from the images that will help improve pointing instructions for Dawn as it is placed in a polar orbit around Vesta. Analyses of Hubble images revealed a pole orientation, or tilt, of approximately four degrees more to the asteroid's east than scientists previously thought.

This means the change of seasons between the southern and northern hemispheres of Vesta may take place about a month later than previously expected while Dawn is orbiting the asteroid. The result is a change in the pattern of sunlight expected to illuminate the asteroid. Dawn needs solar illumination for imaging and some mapping activities.

"While Vesta is the brightest asteroid in the sky, its small size makes it difficult to image from Earth," said Jian-Yang Li, a scientist participating in the Dawn mission from the University of Maryland in College Park. "The new Hubble images give Dawn scientists a better sense of how Vesta is spinning, because our new views are 90 degrees different from our previous images. It's like having a street-level view and adding a view from an airplane overhead."

The recent images were obtained by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in February. The images complemented previous ones of Vesta taken from ground-based telescopes and Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 between 1983 and 2007. Li and his colleagues looked at 216 new images -- and a total of 446 Hubble images overall -- to clarify how Vesta was spinning. The journal Icarus recently published the report online.

"The new results give us food for thought as we make our way toward Vesta," said Christopher Russell, Dawn's principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Because our goal is to take pictures of the entire surface and measure the elevation of features over most of the surface to an accuracy of about 33 feet, or the height of a three-story building, we need to pay close attention to the solar illumination. It looks as if Vesta is going to have a late northern spring next year, or at least later than we planned."

Launched in September 2007, Dawn will leave Vesta to encounter the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015. Vesta and Ceres are the most massive objects in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists study these celestial bodies as examples of the building blocks of terrestrial planets like Earth. Dawn is approximately 216 million kilometers (134 million miles) away from Vesta. Next summer, the spacecraft will make its own measurements of Vesta's rotating surface and allow mission managers to pin down its axis of spin.

"Vesta was discovered just over 200 years ago, and we are excited now to be on the threshold of exploring it from orbit," said Bob Mase, Dawn's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We planned this mission to accommodate our imprecise knowledge of Vesta. Ours is a journey of discovery and, with our ability to adapt, we are looking forward to collecting excellent science data at our target."

The Dawn mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. Several international space organizations are part of the mission team.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/news/dawn20101008.html

A unique partnership between NASA and agencies in Africa and Europe has sent more than 30 terabytes of free Earth science satellite data to South African researchers to support sustainable development and environmental applications in Africa.

The data from one of the instruments on NASA's Terra satellite provide observations of Africa's surface and atmosphere, including vegetation structure, airborne pollution particles, cloud heights and winds. Transfer of these data to a distribution center in Africa will make it broadly accessible to African users who have not been able to remotely download the large data files because of limitations in the continent's Internet infrastructure.

The data are from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) on Terra. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., built and manages the instrument, and NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., processes, archives and distributes the data.

MISR has been making continuous measurements of Earth's surface and atmosphere for more than a decade. MISR observes the sunlit portion of Earth continuously, viewing the entire globe between 82 degrees north and 82 degrees south latitude every nine days. Instead of viewing Earth from a single perspective, the instrument collects images from nine widely spaced view angles.

"NASA is committed to helping governments, organizations and researchers around the world make effective use of Earth observation data to aid in environmental decision making," said Hal Maring, a program manager in the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These efforts support the goals of the Group on Earth Observations, a partnership of international agencies that promotes collaborative use of Earth science data."

South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria will distribute the data at no charge to the research community in the region. CSIR will facilitate access to the large volume of MISR data as part of its broad strategy of educating, training and transferring knowledge to the southern African research community.

"The data transfer can be seen as a birthday present from NASA to the newly-formed South African National Space Agency," said Bob Scholes, CSIR research group leader for ecosystem processes and dynamics. "It will kick-start a new generation of high-quality land surface products, with applications in climate change and avoiding desertification." Desertification is the gradual transformation of habitable land into desert due to climate change or destructive land use practices.

The partnership began in spring 2008, when MISR science team member Michel Verstraete of the European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for Environment and Sustainability (JRC-IES) in Ispra, Italy, participated in an intensive CSIR field campaign to study the environment around Kruger National Park, a major wildlife reserve in South Africa. The researchers studied the area using direct, airborne and space-based measurements. During the campaign, Verstraete learned of the widespread interest by the South African research community in remote-sensing techniques and applications.

In response, JRC-IES and CSIR signed an agreement in July 2008 to facilitate the interaction and exchange of people, knowledge, data and software.

NASA became involved in the collaboration in 2009 after a training workshop for MISR users in Cape Town, South Africa, organized by JPL and Langley Research Center. Although the workshop sparked interest in the potential use of MISR data, it soon became apparent that accessing a large volume of data was a major hurdle for research and applications in developing countries in general and Africa in particular. While Internet connectivity in Africa has improved greatly in recent years, access and bandwidth remain too limited to support downloading vast data files. This led CSIR to host the data directly.

NASA shipped most of the data on high-density tapes this summer. The agencies will ensure the database stays updated with current MISR observations by upgrading connectivity and facilitating sharing of data among participating academic and research institutions.

"This multi-party collaboration will significantly strengthen academic and research institutions in southern Africa and support sustainable development of the entire subcontinent," said Verstraete, who will spend six months in southern Africa next year to help the regional remote-sensing community use the data.

NASA has given a green light for development of a 2013 Mars orbiter mission to investigate the mystery of how Mars lost much of its atmosphere: the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) mission.

Clues on the Martian surface, such as features resembling dry riverbeds and minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water, suggest that Mars once had a denser atmosphere, which supported the presence of liquid water on the surface. As part of a dramatic climate change, most of the Martian atmosphere was lost. Maven will make definitive scientific measurements of present-day atmospheric loss that will offer insight into the Red Planet's history.

Approval to proceed with development followed a review at NASA Headquarters of the detailed plans, instrument suite, budget, and risk factor analysis for the spacecraft.

The mission is led by its principal investigator, Bruce Jakosky of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., manages the mission, which is part of the NASA Mars Exploration Program managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-323

Freshwater is flowing into Earth's ocean in greater amounts every year, thanks to more frequent and extreme storms related to global warming, according to a first-of-its-kind study by a team of NASA and university researchers.

The team, led by Tajdarul Syed of the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, India, and formerly with the University of California, Irvine, used NASA and other world-scale satellite observations to track total water volume flowing from the continents into the ocean each month. They found 18 percent more water fed into the world's ocean from rivers and melting polar ice sheets in 2006 than in 1994. The average annual rise was 1.5 percent.

"That might not sound like much - 1.5 percent a year - but after a few decades, it's huge," said Jay Famiglietti, UC Irvine Earth system science professor and principal investigator on the study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He noted that while freshwater is essential to humans and ecosystems, the rain is falling in all the wrong places, for all the wrong reasons.

"In general, more water is good," Famiglietti said. "But here's the problem: Not everybody is getting more rainfall, and those who are may not need it. What we're seeing is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted - that precipitation is increasing in the tropics and the Arctic Circle with heavier, more punishing storms. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up."

Famiglietti said the evaporation and precipitation cycle taught in grade school is accelerating dangerously because of higher temperatures fueled by greenhouse gases. Hotter weather above the ocean causes freshwater to evaporate faster, which leads to thicker clouds unleashing more powerful storms over land. The resulting rainfall then travels via rivers to the sea in ever-larger amounts, and the cycle begins again.

"Many scientists and models have suggested that if the water cycle is intensifying because of climate change, then we should be seeing increasing river flow. Unfortunately, there is no global discharge measurement network, so we have not been able to tell," wrote Famiglietti and Syed.

Satellite records of sea-level rise, precipitation and evaporation were used to create a unique 13-year record - the longest and first of its kind. The trends the researchers found were all the same: increased evaporation from the ocean that led to increased precipitation on land and more flow back into the ocean. Among the NASA data used in the ongoing study are measurements from the NASA/European Topex/Poseidon and Jason-1 satellite altimeters and the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. The study is funded by NASA and Earth system science fellowships.

"As we turn up the thermostat on planet Earth, it's not just higher temperatures we have to think about," said co-author Josh Willis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Long-term changes in rainfall will be a part of climate change too. What we've shown here is that we now have the tools to see global climate change as it occurs - not just the warming, but changes in the hydrological cycle as well."

The researchers cautioned that although they had analyzed more than a decade of data, it was still a relatively short time frame. Natural ups and downs that appear in climate data make detecting long-term trends challenging. Further study is needed, they said, and is underway.

Other authors of the study include Don Chambers of the University of South Florida, Tampa, Fla.; and Kyle Hilburn of Remote Sensing Systems, Santa Rosa, Calif.

For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-322

A Kepler Mission research paper written to serve as “the standard reference for the mission,” has been determined by Thomson Reuters Essential Science Indicators (SM) to be the most-cited paper in the Space Science Emerging Research Front for October 2010.

Authored by David Koch, Kepler Mission deputy principal investigator, along with a host of co-authors, “Kepler Mission Design, Realized Photometric Performance, and Early Science” provides an overview of the mission designed to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone (where liquid water could exist) of solar-like stars.

Jennifer Minnick, editor of Essential Science Indicators on the Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch.com website, said the paper was honored as a Highly Cited Paper, signifying that it is in the top one percent of the research papers published in the past 10 years, from Jan. 1, 2000 to June 30, 2010. Essential Science Indicators is a comprehensive compilation of science performance statistics and science trends data based on journal article publication counts and citation data from the Thomson Reuters database of more than 11,000 journals throughout the world.

“Your paper is part of a Research Front that is appearing in Essential Science Indicators for the first time; your paper is, in fact, the most cited paper in the Front,” Minnick wrote to Koch informing him of the determination to be featured in Essential Science Indicators. She also noted that the research paper also is a “Hot Paper,” meaning that it’s receiving citations relatively quickly after its publication, compared to other papers in its field.

“Given the variety of ways this paper is popping up in our database, I’m sure we’re going to be seeing a lot of Kepler-related papers in the months to come,” Minnick wrote.

In comments scheduled for publication Oct. 1 on the ScienceWatch.com website, Koch noted that the Kepler Mission “has become the touchstone against which planet detection is measured,” and that the research paper “is intended to be a standard reference for the mission, both as an introduction to its design, as well as a source of key parameters for those who are interested in analyzing the interpreting the results.”

Koch noted that the mission is “truly a team effort” involving a highly integrated team of scientists, engineers, programmers and managers from NASA, industry and academia.

Based on its first 43 days of operation, Koch said the mission’s use of photometry to measure transits, or the slight dimming caused by stars passing in front of other stars, has been quite successful and bodes well for future discoveries by Kepler.

“We expect to determine the frequency of exoplanets, especially Earth-size planets and how this varies with stellar parameters, including binary stars, orbital parameters, planetary size and the multiplicity of planets in a system,” Koch said. “These results will lead to a better understanding of planet formation theory and how our solar system came to have its current properties. These results will also be used to guide the development of future missions to detect and measure the composition of exoplanet atmospheres,” Koch added.

In addition, Koch predicted that the Kepler mission will help answer some basic questions about the universe.

“For millennia, we humans have been pondering the question: “Are there other worlds like ours?” The results from Kepler will not be able to identify inhabited worlds - planets with life, but will answer the question as to whether Earth-size planets are common or rare in the habitable zone of other stars. Even a null result would be significant, implying our having to rethink our place in the universe.”

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/kepler_paper.html