In a lonely cosmos, a hunt for worlds like ours

The New York Times : Presently perched on a Delta 2 rocket at Cape Canaveral is a one-ton spacecraft called Kepler. If all goes well, the rocket will lift off about 10:50 Friday evening on a journey that will eventually propel Kepler into orbit around theSun. There the spacecraft’s mission will be to discover Earth-like planets in Earth-like places -- that is to say, in the not-too-cold, not-too-hot, Goldilocks zones around stars where liquid water can exist.