The Kepler Mission is designed to discover Earth-sized planets in or near the habitable zone and orbiting other stars in the Milky Way. The mission was launched on 7th March 2009. It is named in honor of Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer. The minimum lifetime of the mission is 3.5 years. Kepler uses a photometer to continuously monitor more than 145,000 main sequence stars in a fixed field of view.

The main scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to determine the diversity and structure of different planetary systems in our galaxy. To achieve this Kepler performs the following functions

• Determines the terrestrial and larger planets there are in or near the habitable zone of a other stars.
• Determines the distribution of shapes and sizes of the orbits of the discovered planets orbiting the other stars.
• Determines the approximate number planets in the multiple-star systems in our galaxy.
• Determines the sizes, masses, densities and other properties of short-period giant planets.
• Determines the properties of the stars around which these planets revolve.

The first main results of Kepler Mission were announced on 4th January 2010. In the initial results, all short-period planets were discovered and the longer period planets are expected later in the mission. Five new planets, which are very close to their stars, were discovered within the first six weeks of the launch of the mission.