Tomorrow NASA is going to launch the Kepler Mission, a dedicated Space-Telescope that will search for other planets that are Earth-like in size, mass and composition, as well as taking into account the planet's orbit, eccentricity and rotation as well as the parent star's size, age and luminosity, all key factors in determining the habitablity of the planet for life as we know it.

The telescope will search a 3000ly patch of sky, from an Earth-trailing-heliocentric-orbt, watching 100000 stars and recording their brightness every 30 minutes.

If the telescope finds even a single Earth-like planet in that patch of sky I think I would be somewhat surprised. I also wonder what NASA hopes to achieve. Is this about a search for intelligent life? or is it merely a chance to look for other planets that could harbour Human life? Personally I think it is more-likely to be the latter.

What do you think? Will a discovery from the Kepler Mission be enough to turn humanities eyes to the stars again? Do you think we have intelligent cousins out there somewhere? Would you like to think we have intelligent cousins out there?