Sick of hearing about the toils of Wall Street, Bank of America, AIG, General Motors, and the unemployment rate jumping to 8%, this morning I did what our ancient ancestors did when they needed a break — I looked to the stars.
Tonight NASA is launching a spacecraft that will trail the Earth on its orbit around the sun for three to four years. On this celestial tour, the spacecraft’s telescope will focus its attention on 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region. Instead of a neighborhood of college fraternities, it turns out the Cygnus-Lyra region is a key district of the Milky Way that NASA is targeting to find Earth-like planets.
The Kepler spacecraft — named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, whom we all remember from high school science class — will focus specifically on a star’s brightness and record if other planets pass in front of it. The mission, which cost $600 million to fund, is to find “Earth-like planets with rocky surfaces, orbiting in their stars’ habitable, or ‘Goldilocks,’ zones — not too hot or too cold, but just right for liquid water to exist.”
Basically they want to take pictures of a small blue dot orbiting a star at the most optimal distance for sustaining life. I can get behind that.
Because taking a break from bailouts and stimulus packages can be awfully refreshing. It gives us a sense of perspective and let’s us ask those age-old questions. Like couldn’t that $600 million be used to rescue another troubled American industry in need of financing? Sigh. Never mind. I guess I’m too jaded after all.
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