摘要：

The Kepler Mission is in the development phase with launch planned for 2008. The mission goal is to reliably detect a significant number of Earth-size and smaller planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars. (see W. Borucki, et al, this meeting.) The mission design allows for exploring the diversity of planetary sizes and orbital periods for a wide variety of stellar spectral types, (see posters by D. Latham, et al and T. Brown, et al, this meeting on stellar catalog preparation). In this poster we describe the technical approach taken for the mission design; describing the flight and ground system, the detection methodology, the photometer design and capabilities, the way the data are taken and processed, the Guest Observer opportunity and the EPO aspects (see paper by E. DeVore, et al). Finally the detection capability in terms of planet size is presented as a function of planetary orbital period, mission duration, stellar type and combined differential photometric precision.

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