NASA will host a news teleconference at 1 p.m. EST (18:00 UTC), Wednesday, Feb. 26, to announce new discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.

Briefing participants:
— Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet exploration program scientist, NASA’s Astrophysics Division in Washington
— Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist, NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
— Jason Rowe, research scientist, SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif.
— Sara Seager, professor of planetary science and physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

Launched in March 2009, Kepler was the first NASA mission to find Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone — the range of distance from a star in which the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might sustain liquid water. The telescope has since detected planets and planet candidates spanning a wide range of sizes and orbital distances. These findings have led to a better understanding of our place in the galaxy.

For dial-in information, media should e-mail their name, affiliation and telephone number to J.D. Harrington at j.d.harrington@nasa.gov no later than 12 noon EST, Wednesday.

The public is invited to listen to the teleconference live via UStream:
http://www.ustream.tv/nasa-arc

Questions can be submitted on Twitter using the hashtag #AskNASA.

Audio of the teleconference also will be streamed live:
http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

A link to relevant graphics will be posted at the start of the teleconference on NASA’s Kepler site:
http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

Contacts:
J.D. Harrington
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
+1 202-358-5241
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

Michele Johnson
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
+1 650-604-6982
michele.johnson@nasa.gov