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The countdown to the Kepler Mission has started. On Friday 6 March, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is set to launch an extremely powerful telescope into space from the Cape Canaveral space station in Florida (USA). The objective, which is certainly ambitious, is to identify habitable planets like ours.

The Kepler Mission will explore a vast region of space in the Cygnus and Lyra constellations looking for terrestrial planets (i.e., planets one half to twice the size of the Earth), in particular those that orbit in habitable zones (we'll see later what is meant by 'habitable zones').

The mission will last three-and-a-half years (although it may run for as long as six years) and will observe more than 100,000 stars.

The method to find out whether these stars are orbited by Earth-like planets is, apparently simple. It is based on the phenomenon known as 'transit', which refers to the path of a planet viewed from in front of the star it orbits.

During the transit, the star emits less light. The telescope on the Kepler Mission will be capable of measuring any changes to the light emitted and, according to these changes, will be able to determine whether the planet that passes in front of the star is bigger or smaller, and whether it is comparable in size to the Earth or not.