CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA's planet-hunting spacecraft Kepler has blasted off aboard a rocket from Cape Canaveral.
The Kepler telescope rocketed into the night sky late Friday on a historic voyage to track down other Earths in a faraway patch of the Milky Way galaxy.
The $600-million mission will last at least 3 1/2 years.
Once it's settled into an orbit around the sun, Kepler will stare non-stop at 100,000 stars.
The telescope will watch for any dimming, or winks, in the stellar brightness that might be caused by orbiting planets.
It's the first NASA mission capable of detecting Earth-size planets around stars like our sun.
Kepler is named after a German 17th-century astrophysicist.
