Kepler Spacecraft Should Pin Down 'Alien Earth' Planets Despite Glitch

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft should be able to achieve its primary mission goal regardless of whether or not it can bounce back from a recent malfunction, researchers say.

Kepler launched in March 2009 on a 3.5-year prime mission to determine how common Earth-like planets are throughout the Milky Way galaxy. 

NASA's Kepler fined out Multiple Planets Orbiting a Pair of Stars

Coming less than a year after the announcement of the first circumbinary planet, Kepler-16b, NASA's Kepler mission has exposed multiple transiting planets orbiting two suns for the first time. This system, Known as a circumbinary planetary system, is 4.900 light-years from Earth in the group Cygnus.

This exposure confirm that more than one planet can form and persist in the stressful dominion of a binary star and Demonstrates the diversity of planetary systems in our galaxy.