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June 26, 2009
Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute says it will archive data from a NASA probe launched earlier this year to search the cosmos for Earth-like planets. The Kepler spacecraft will spend the next 3 1/2 years staring nonstop at 100,000 stars in a remote patch of the Milky Way for potentially habitable planets. The institute's role is to convert raw data from the probe into files that can be analyzed by Kepler researchers and store those files. The Baltimore institute, which coordinates the use of the Hubble Space Telescope, says its track record of processing and archiving Hubble data led to its selection for the Kepler mission and could lead to roles in other missions.

- Associated Press