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Reflections on NASA's
Kepler Mission
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[ ♪ ]
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Nick Gautier: Ever since
I was a little kid
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I was interested in space. I
wanted to be an astronaut.
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You know, things like
the glasses
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meant that I
couldn't do that.
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So I became an
astronomer instead.
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And when the opportunity to
join the Kepler project -
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to discover
planets
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new
around other stars -
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I grabbed that immediately.
I really wanted to do that.
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It's been a really
inspiring mission
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because we got to discover
all of this new stuff
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that nobody ever saw before.
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Leslie Livesay: There was no
buzz about exoplanets
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when we really launched Kepler.
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But after its results
I think everyone,
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if you had to stop and talk
to someone on the street,
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they'll be able to talk to you
about what they think
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about exoplanets and
what they know.
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And that's a real difference.
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Riley Duren: Most people, in
fact everybody I worked with
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on the project,
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this wasn't a 9-5 job for them.
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And they wouldn't have
lasted if it had
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because this was 8, 10, 20 years
of some people's lives.
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What kept them motivated is,
they were, you know,
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everybody was passionate
about the science.
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They were excited about
finding those exoplanets.
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Livesay: From its
beginnings it was
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the little mission
that could.
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Definitely the concept
and the idea -
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a lot of people thought
it couldn't be done,
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it was a crazy thing to do.
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And so in that way it was
really demonstrated
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that it could be done.
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Gautier: What
Kepler
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really
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did,
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and what it was so
successful at,
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is just discovering that
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essentially every star
has a planet.
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This is a big deal.
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There's lots and lots
of planets out there
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and that was not appreciated
before Kepler.
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NASA's Ames Research Center in
California's Silicon Valley
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manages the Kepler and K2
missions for NASA's
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Science Mission Directorate.
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NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, California,
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managed Kepler mission
development.
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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory