Shindell is the figure most responsible for convincing officials at the NASA Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, to transfer this janky-looking but monumentally important artifact to the museum. Jim Preston, National Air and Space Museum The Kepler technology demonstrator played a huge role in the lead up to the discovery of thousands of unknown exoplanets. “It’s not a clean piece of space technology like we’re used to seeing.” “You can see the duct tape you can see the wires,” says Matt Shindell, the museum’s curator of planetary science and exploration. But without the placards and contextual materials that make clear the artifact’s significance, the tool doesn’t look like much. The piece of gear that changed their minds, the Kepler technology demonstrator, is one of the treasures that went on view in October when the museum reopened its west-wing galleries as part of a massive seven-year building renovation.

When NASA announced Kepler’s retirement on October 30, 2018, the space agency celebrated an astonishing scientific achievement-confirmation of the existence of worlds, potentially even habitable ones, beyond our own solar system.Īnd yet for years, NASA decision makers were unconvinced the observatory would work. With this method, sky watchers can accurately estimate the object’s mass and distance from the star. Kepler discovered more than 2,600 of those “new” planets with the simple detection trick of monitoring the change in light via what is called “transit,” or what occurs when a celestial body, potentially a planet, passes between the observatory and a distant star. NASA's Kepler space telescope (above in an artistic rendering) discovered more than 2,600 'new' planets before it was retired in 2018.

The majority of these exoplanets-more than 5,200 as of this writing-are known thanks to the Kepler space telescope, launched in 2009 and operated until the fuel supply required for the observatory to maintain its orbit was finally exhausted nine years later.

Almost half a century later, the museum’s reconceptualized exhibition, “Exploring the Planets,” reflects the fact that astronomers have since confirmed the existence of thousands more outside our own solar system and are now confident the Milky Way galaxy contains even more planets than stars. When the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum opened in 1976, the planets known to science numbered just nine.

Unknown worlds