The Kepler mission, launched on March 6, 2009, is the first step in NASA's quest for finding Earth-like planets with space-based telescopes. Kepler will monitor 100,000 stars for the telltale dimming that will occur when an Earth-like planet passes in front of its parent star and blocks out a small portion of its star's light.
A major paper on SIM, "Taking the Measure of the Universe: Precision Astrometry with SIM PlanetQuest," was published in the January 2008 issue of PASP.
Astronomers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have recently concluded that the upcoming planet-finding mission, SIM PlanetQuest, would be able to detect an Earth-like planet around the star 40 Eridani, a planet familiar to 'Star Trek' fans as 'Vulcan.'
The University of Virginia's Steve Majewski and his team plan to use NASA's SIM PlanetQuest space telescope to make ultra-precise measurements that will reveal more about the nature of our galaxy than ever before possible, laying the foundation for a real-life guide to the galaxy.