17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida another solid rocket booster is raised off its transporter.

On Launch Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, another solid rocket booster is raised off its transporter. It will be raised to vertical and lifted into the mobile service tower for mating to the first stage of the Kepler's Delta 2 launch vehicle. The Kepler mission is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5, 2009. Photo credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann