The NASA Kepler Mission

Last September, the Institute of Physics released a volume describing the results of NASA’s Kepler Mission. The mission’s purpose was to survey a region of the galaxy to see how many planets could be found and determine their properties. I was honored that the editor, Steve Howell, asked me to contribute a short article about the appearance of real exoplanets in science fiction. In the article, I discuss how astronomy and science fiction have “grown up” together, and look at how science fiction contributed to helping people see the planets of our own solar system as places we could actually visit and show how this is starting to happen with exoplanets.

The NASA Kepler Mission

The NASA Kepler and K2 missions have made fundamental, paradigm-changing advances in essentially every area of astrophysics and planetary science. While known for their breakthrough discoveries in exoplanets – especially small rocky worlds orbiting in the habitable zone of their host suns – these missions have also continued to make numerous scientific advances in solar system science, stellar astrophysics and extragalactic astronomy. This book is devoted to the Kepler and K2 missions and covers the tremendous new discoveries made in the areas of spacecraft engineering, asteroseismology, binary and variable stars, stellar astrophysics, white dwarfs, asteroids and comets, active galaxies, supernovae, black holes, and of course exoplanets of all types. It is suitable for the interested layperson, pupils of science and space missions, and advanced science students and researchers wishing for an introduction and highly focused memoir of the NASA Kepler mission and its amazing accomplishments.

The book is designed to provide an introduction to advanced science presentations on all major mission topics. It was written by the scientists who made the discoveries. It includes engineering and spacecraft discussions. The book describes the effects of the mission on science and the world, integrating many of the major discoveries and their graphics, movies, and materials. Finally, the book includes side boxes of interest, for example exoplanet naming conventions and perspectives from noted scientists.

The editor, Steve B Howell, is a senior research scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He was formerly the head of the Space Science and Astrobiology Division and the project scientist for NASA’s premier exoplanet finding missions: Kepler and K2. Howell has written more than 800 scientific publications, numerous popular and technical articles, and has authored and edited 10 books on astronomy and astronomical instrumentation. He was also my co-editor on the books, A Kepler’s Dozen and Kepler’s Cowboys, which featured science fiction stories set at real Kepler planets.

Like many academic volumes, The NASA Kepler Mission has a pretty large price tag, priced more for academic than personal libraries. Still, if you live near a university with a science library, you can likely borrow a copy if you want to peruse the book or even read my sidebar article. The publisher’s page for the book is: https://store.ioppublishing.org/page/detail/The-NASA-Kepler-Mission/?k=9780750322942

Below are the two anthologies I edited with Steve.

A Kepler’s Dozen

Kepler’s Cowboys

You can learn about the anthology A Kepler’s Dozen by visiting: http://davidleesummers.com/Keplers-Dozen.html

The second anthology we edited about Kepler planets is Kepler’s Cowboys. You can learn more about it at: http://davidleesummers.com/Keplers-Cowboys.html