Kepler Space Telescope
Mission overview
Kepler was a NASA telescope that discovered thousands of exoplanets by watching for transits.
Mission data
Identity and engineering data from Wikidata (type-verified match · Q47272) · launch date 2009-03-07 confirmed
| International designator | 2009-011A | Wikidata · catalogued |
Full field-level provenance
- International designator: Wikidata (Wikimedia Foundation) — community-curated structured knowledge base · Wikidata · wdt · P247 · catalogued value · retrieved 2026-07-11
Sourced from Wikidata (community-maintained structured data, whose statements link to their own citations where provided); each value carries its Wikidata QID. A field with conflicting Wikidata values is omitted. Launch date is used only to cross-check the catalogue, never to override it. Fields Wikidata did not provide, or where conflicting values exist, are omitted, never invented.
Primary-source verification
Committed mission facts cross-checked against the official NASA primary source — NASA Science — Kepler.
| Launch date | 2009-03-07 · primary states 2009-03-06 | Conflict |
Verified by corroboration against the official agency document: a launch date is “Confirmed by primary” only when the page literally states it; a launch mass only when the page states a figure equal to it within catalogue rounding (±0.5%). Source precedence is primary agency > peer-reviewed > official mission page > structured secondary > Wikidata; a primary source outranks Wikidata but no engineering value is transcribed from the page — an uncorroborated value is kept as its original (secondary) source, never re-labelled primary. Checked 2026-07-12.
Outcome & discoveries
Showed that planets are common in the galaxy, finding thousands of confirmed exoplanets.
- ★Thousands of exoplanets, establishing that most stars host planets
Knowledge connections
- Operated byNASA
- Named afterJohannes Kepler
- Part of programDiscovery Program
- ObservesVisible light
- Discovered2MASS J19383260+4603591 b
- DiscoveredGJ 9827 b
- DiscoveredGJ 9827 c
- DiscoveredGJ 9827 d
- DiscoveredHIP 41378 b
- DiscoveredHIP 41378 c
- DiscoveredHIP 41378 d
- DiscoveredHIP 41378 e
- DiscoveredHIP 41378 f
- DiscoveredK2-18 b
- DiscoveredKepler-100 b
- DiscoveredKepler-100 c
- DiscoveredKepler-100 d
- DiscoveredKepler-11 b
- DiscoveredKepler-11 c
- DiscoveredKepler-11 d
- DiscoveredKepler-11 e
- DiscoveredKepler-11 f
- DiscoveredKepler-11 g
- DiscoveredKepler-122 b
Related missions
Sources
The primary and reference sources this topic draws on.
- NASANational Aeronautics and Space Administration
Mission data, planetary science, space telescopes, and public-domain imagery.
Most NASA-produced imagery is in the public domain; individual items are checked for usage terms before publication.