Press Releases --||-- Schedule --||-- Mission History --||-- Top

Press Releases

2008 May 5. NASA Kepler Mission Offers Opportunity to Send Names Into Space. How cool would it be to have your name on board the spacecraft that discovers the first known Earth-like planet beyond our solar system? Well, here's your chance.... Release from JPL: 2008-073. Release from Ames: 08_38AR

Press Releases --||-- Schedule --||-- Mission History --||-- Top

Schedule

Press Releases --||-- Schedule --||-- Mission History --||-- Top

Mission History

• 25 Sep 2007 - Precision coating process of Kepler's primary mirror, and the integration of the detector array assembly completed. See article.
• Apr-Sep 2006. Critical Design Review (CDR) successfully completed.
• 8 Aug 2006 - Kepler Mirror Arrives at Ball Aerospace for Test and Integration. The largest optical mirror ever built for a mission beyond Earth's orbit has arrived at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. for environmental testing and spacecraft integration. [Click on photo below for larger version.]

• Launch was slipped by 4 months in Mar. 2006 due to fiscal problems. The spacecraft design was changed from a gimbaled high-gain antenna, to a fixed antenna requiring body pointing to downlink the scientific data. The change was to reduce the risk, cost and complexity. This change will result in a loss of about one day of observing per month.
• Launch was slipped by 8 months due to funding constraints applied in Feb 2005
• 25 Jan. 2005 Kepler mission entered phase C/D. The project received official notice to proceed into Phase C/D following a Confirmation Review held at NASA Headquarters on 2 Dec. 2004.
  
• 12-15 Oct. 2004. Preliminary Design Review (PDR) successfully completed. Preceded by 31 incremental PDRs (iPDR) throughout the summer.
  
• Optics Update: The Schmidt corrector has been delivered to Brashear for figuring. The faceplates and core of the primary mirror have been sagged at Corning. Corning began waterjet cutting of the core the week of May 30, 2004.
  
• 28 Oct. 2003. Downselection was made to e2v Technologies as the single supplier of all flight CCDs. e2v has met or exceeded all design requirements to date.
  
• 15-17 Oct. 2003. System Requirements Review (SRR) was held. All systems are go!
  
• May 2003. Brashear was competitively selected as the vendor for the 1.4 m diameter light-weight primary mirror and the fused-silica Schmidt corrector. Press release Corning will be providing both of the pieces of glass. Press release
  
• May 2003. Evaluation grade CCDs (electrically functional, but not thinned) were received from the two CCD vendors, STA and e2v.
  
• Oct 2002. Phase B was officially started.
  
• July 2002. e2v and STA were awarded parallel contracts for 30 flight CCDs each as long lead procurements.
  
• 21 Dec 2001. Kepler was selected as one of the next two Discovery missions ! ! ! ! See the NASA Ames press release, the NASA Headquarters press release and the Discovery Newsletter. Note that the launch date in the press releases has since been updated to 2007.
  
• 20 July 2001 NASA HQ received our Concept Study Report (Step 2 proposal) for the next new Discovery Mission. Two competing proposals (Dawn and Inside Jupiter) were also due by July 24.
  
• 22 Mar 2001 a kick-off meeting was held at NASA HQ for the three candidate missions to begin their 4 month studies leading to a down-selection of one mission for flight.
  
• 4 Jan 2001 the Kepler Mission was selected as one of three candidate missions for the next Discovery mission. Final selection for flight will be done towards the end of 2001. See the attached NASA HQ Announcement. Further details are contained in the NASA Ames Press Release
  
• We have updated this web site to reflect what has been proposed to NASA.
  
• We received funding in 1999 to perform a technology demonstration. This is described in several new papers on the Technical Papers page and in several new web pages Technology Demonstration.