"It may take a little longer to find Earth-like planets than astronomers had hoped, due to a glitch on NASA's Kepler spacecraft. But the mission is far from blind to such worlds, says the mission's chief scientist. Kepler launched in March to search forMovie Camera life-friendly planets around other stars. It does this by looking for slight dips in a star's brightness that occur when a planet passes in front of the star, an event called a transit. In August, the Kepler team announced that the spacecraft had detected a previously known gas giant planet, confirming its ability to spot alien worlds. But the mission's ultimate goal is to find Earth-size planets at the right distances from their parent stars to be able to have liquid water on their surfaces, making them potential abodes for life." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet