Kepler On Overtime

NASA's Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft has completed its primary mission and is now on an extended mission.  NASA expects Kepler to continue producing results until at least 2016.

Kepler has already identified more than two thousand possible exoplanets, and NASA expects to find many more, including some Earth-like worlds.  The longer Kepler can observe its 150,000 target stars, the smaller worlds, and the more worlds farther from their parent stars it can detect.