Thursday, June 13, 2013

The Kepler Mission

Have you heard of the Kepler Mission?  In March of 2009 NASA launched KEPLER; a space observatory (cool rocket ship).  The mission of the Kepler observatory is to survey the Milky Way galaxy and discover Earth-like planets in or near the habitable zone.

As of now Kepler had found over 2,700 candidates, and 132 of those have been confirmed exoplanets.

Now I’m not real sure the definition of such terms as habitable zone and exoplanet.  But it sounds like we might all want to pack some bags in case we will be moving to a new planet soon.  This one seems to be getting pretty threadbare anyway.


...Ole’ Kepler has his work cut out for him!


That Kepler rocket ship has a tough task though.  See, planets revolve around stars, and there are over 375 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone.  Furthermore, there are over 100 billion other galaxies like the Milky Way.  So I would say ole’ Kepler has his work cut out for him!

All this new planets talk got me to thinking about something I read once.  In his book God’s Plan for Man, Finis Jennings Dake said that God lives in a mansion on a material planet called Heaven.  Oh, I realize Dake’s writings are controversial.  Many consider him to be a heretic.  But the Charismatic - Pentecostal world has embraced most of his work as inspired.   Wouldn’t it be cool if the Kepler Mission discovered Heaven!

I’m not sure what all is involved in NASA’s Kepler Mission, or if that's even possible.  But this Kepler has a mission of his own, and a quite similar mission at that.  This Kepler's mission is to actually travel to Heaven – and to take as many with me as my cool rocket ship will hold. 

Come on board and let’s blast off.  But I have to warn you - it's a one way trip!


Illustration courtesy NASA (public domain)