Google search reaches for the stars

This artist rendering shows the different types of planets in our Milky Way galaxy detected by NASAs Kepler spacecraft. Source: Supplied

INTERNET giant Google its taking its search function to new heights: Finding new planets, no less.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will be launched in 2017 and will see Google join NASA to send a set of specialist cameras in to space to scan the skies for planets orbiting bright nearby stars.

NASA has said the satellite will focus upon stars likely to have Earth-like planets.

It will use a technique to analyse starlight to find planets as they swing around their stars, similar to that used by the Kepler telescope which has already found some 2700 orbiting bodies.

"TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission," George Ricker, TESS' principle investigator, said in a statement.

"It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighbourhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth."

NASA is planning for a robotic spaceship to capture a small asteroid and park it near the moon to explore.

Google's role so far extends back to 2008 when it provided initial funding for the development of the telescope's sensors and optical cameras.

Are there plans to launch a Google Space View to join its terrestrial equivalent?

Google has not said.

The launch is one of two projects slated by NASA to be launched in 2017.

The second involves a neutron star scanner to be fitted to the International Space Station.

This illustration provided by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shows artist's renderings of planets Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f compared with Venus and the Earth. Scientists have found the two Earth-sized planets orbiting a distant star, an encouraging sign for prospects of finding life elsewhere.

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