(Music)
Eugene Tu: The idea that there are more planets
than stars is just incredible to think about.
We know that there are billions and billions
of stars in our galaxy and to think that
there are even more planets...
it completely changes our thinking,
and our place in the universe.
Jon Jenkins: I remember being a child sitting in a...
lying down in the summer grass, looking up into
the night sky and wondering whether there were
planets orbiting the stars I was looking at
with beings on the surface of their planets
looking in our direction asking the same question.
And, so what more planets than stars means to me
is that we have the hope to eventually find out
whether the answer to that question is yes or no.
Natalie Batalha: For me, it's been transformative
in that it has really catalyzed a third pathway
for the search for life in the universe or the
search for life beyond Earth.
You know, before Kepler we had SETI searches,
to listen for techno-signatures in the galaxy.
We had solar system exploration that was
searching for life, you know, hiding in niches
in the solar system, maybe in a subterranean cave
on Mars or underneath the ice on Europa's...
Europa or Enceladus.
But a third pathway was opened up, I think,
by the sudden realization that the nearest
potentially habitable planet could just be
a stone's throw away.
That there are tens of billions of these planets
in our galaxy alone.
Paul Hertz: I think one of things that was most
amazing about the Kepler mission was after
the two reaction wheels died, and I was convinced
that the mission couldn't continue because nobody
had ever considered operating Kepler
with only two reaction wheels.
And the brilliant scientists and engineers
who were working on Kepler, came up with
this scheme that we've used successfully for several
years to operate Kepler's K2 mission of using
the solar pressure, the pressure from the sun's light
to hold Kepler in place instead
of a third reaction wheel.
I mean, that just makes you think that, you know,
when something breaks on a satellite,
wow, we can figure it out, we can make it work.
That's fabulous.
Nick Gautier: Ever since I was a little kid I was
interested in space, I wanted to be an astronaut,
you know, but things like the glasses, you know,
meant that I couldn't do that.
So, I became an astronomer instead.
And when the opportunity to join the Kepler project,
to discover new planets around other stars,
I grabbed that immediately.
I really wanted to do that.
It's been a really inspiring mission because
we got to discover all of this new stuff
that nobody ever saw before.
Courtney Dressing: Growing up I read a lot of
science fiction and watched a lot
of science fiction films.
In all of those movies and books it was
taken for granted that planetary systems were common.
So, I think I grew up with that expectation.
But until the Kepler mission, there was no basis
to assume that planetary systems
were really that common.
With Kepler, we've hinted that perhaps some of those
science fiction stories could become reality
in the future.
Geert Barentsen: By studying this universe,
we ultimately start to understand our place in it,
and understand where we come from, what our future
will be, and why we exist.
Which I think is one of the most fundamental questions
we can ask as a human species, is where does all this,
where does all this stuff come from?
And Kepler has provided key answers by answering
the fact that planet Earth is not alone.
There's planets everywhere in our galaxy.
Leslie Livesay: There was no buzz about exoplanets
when we really launched Kepler, but after
its results I think everyone, if you got to stop and
talk with someone on the street, they'll be able
to talk to you about what they think about
exoplanets and what they know,
and that's a real difference.
Roger Hunter: I saw this... an article recently
and it's depicting a cave wall painting
from 17 to 18 thousand years ago.
And it showed, for example, the first time
that our ancestors were thinking abstractly.
And this cave wall painting was fascinating.
It showed what their everyday life was like
and they were hunting, they were gathering,
and this is how they existed.
But, in this cave wall painting there were some
unusual articles in the painting, and they were stars.
And it's one of the first times that we have evidence
that our ancestors we actually
looking up at the heavens.
They might not have known what they were looking at,
but fast forward thousands of years to, you know,
the twenty-first century and here we are
with a machine that has now proving those stars,
allowing us to find planets.
Riley Duran: Most people that I, in fact everybody
that I work with on the project, this wasn't a
9-to-5 job for them and they wouldn't
have lasted if it had.
Because this mission, you know, this is
eight, ten, twenty years of some people's lives.
What kept them motivated is they were, you know,
everybody was passionate about the science.
They were excited about finding those exoplanets.
Christina Hedges: We've found so many fantastic
and exciting planet systems out there,
none of which look quite like what we have at home.
And for me, the most exciting part of all of this
is not just the sheer number of planets.
We found thousands, but the fact that we found
so many varied planets.
We found massive, puffy hot Jupiters that
have orbits shorter than Mercury, and we found
mini-Neptunes where we don't know if they are
solid and rocky or are they puffy and gassy.
We found brand new forming planets and old planets, too.
And I'm really excited about the zoo of variability
in planets that we found.
Steve Howell: I think it's a great discovery,
I'm glad we found that.
But the reason it's not a surprise is
you see this in everyday life.
Go out into your gravel parking lot
and look around at rocks.
There's more small rocks than big rocks.
Go look at birds.
There's more small birds than big birds.
Go look at bugs.
Anyway, there's always more small things than large things.
And for us as humans, that's great.
Because small planets, rocky planets like the Earth
are what we can call home.
So, it's fabulous that there's more planets than stars.
Jessie Dotson: Before Kepler, we knew exoplanets existed
and we suspected they were common, but now we know
they're common and once we know they're common,
that really opens up the possibility to have missions
like TESS, where you look for planets around nearby stars
that are good for follow up.
Or some of the ground-based instruments right now
that are working on doing initial direct imaging
of exoplanets.
Some of the technology going on that, you know,
twenty years from now might be able to directly image
and measure the spectra of an exoplanet.
We needed to know that planets were common
before we could invest in those things.
And the fact that we know they're common and
all those things are starting to happen is really exciting.
Andrew Vanderburg: This is the golden age of exoplanets.
Kepler has given us this tremendous data set,
this gift that we can continue studying for decades.
And all in the meantime, there are new missions,
new telescopes, and new technologies that are coming along
which are going to help us learn even more
in different ways and go beyond what even Kepler could do.