New Astronomy Reviews Special Issue: History of Kepler's Major Exoplanet "Firsts"

TL;DR

This paper reviews the history of Kepler's major exoplanet discoveries, emphasizing the behind-the-scenes research and development efforts that enabled these scientific breakthroughs during the early 2010s.

Contribution

It provides a detailed historical account of the development, challenges, and key research efforts that led to Kepler's first major exoplanet discoveries.

Findings

Kepler's first exoplanet discoveries were delayed by over a year due to development challenges.

Significant behind-the-scenes research was crucial for analyzing Kepler data and confirming exoplanets.

The paper highlights the collaborative efforts of scientists behind Kepler's landmark discoveries.

Abstract

NASA's Kepler Mission revolutionized exoplanet science in the early part of the 2010's. Looking back from the perspective of the end of that decade, Kepler appears to have burst upon the scene ready for battle, like Athena springing forth, fully formed, from the head of Zeus. The story was not so simple. Kepler's first major exoplanet discoveries were not announced until more than a year had passed since the spacecraft started collecting scientific data, and by that time many exoplanet scientists not working on the project had become frustrated with the lack of results coming from the Kepler project. But an immense amount of work was required to develop the tools and conceptual framework needed to harvest the abundant field of data that the spacecraft was producing. This issue contains articles describing some of the research efforts, most of which took place behind the scenes, that led to the announcements/publication of several of Kepler's major exoplanet "firsts", written by the scientists who led the landmark discovery papers.