Kepler Mission is GO

In other news:

Kepler, a sophisticated space telescope, blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the early hours of the morning, and separated from its carrier, a Delta II rocket, nearly 450 miles above the earth. telegraph.co.uk

Kepler's job is to scrutinise the area of the part of the Milky Way near the Cygnus and Lyra constellations, looking for planets around the stars there. Specifically, it's hoped that it'll find a rocky Earth like planet - providing some solid evidence to back up speculations of exactly how common a solar system like ours is.. are we unique - or do similar systems, with similarly composed planets (with conditions suitable for life!) crop up all over the place?