“The driving force behind NASA’s prolific planet-hunting Kepler mission is retiring, ending a 53-year career with the space agency. Bill Borucki came up with the idea for the Kepler observatory in the early 1980s and continued championing the concept through four failed proposals until the mission was finally approved in 2000. . . . [Kepler] showed that the galaxy is full of Earth-size planets orbiting in the habitable zone of other stars. . . .
“After a 53-year career, Borucki won’t be giving up research altogether. Next month, he’ll start another chapter as a volunteer ‘Ames Associate,’ in which capacity he’ll continue studying alien worlds and planet formation, NASA officials said.” Learn more here.
