The Kepler telescope launched into orbit in March 2009, initiating NASA’s first mission to discover Earth-size planets orbiting Sun-like stars. Kepler simultaneously collected data for ∼160,000 target stars over its four-year mission, identifying over 4700 planet candidates, 2300 confirmed or validated planets, and 2100 eclipsing binaries. While Kepler was designed to discover exoplanets, the long term, ultra-high photometric precision measurements it achieved also make it a premier observational facility for stellar astrophysics, especially in the field of asteroseismology, and for variable stars, such as RR Lyrae stars. The Kepler Science Operations Center (SOC) was developed at NASA Ames Research Center to process the data acquired by Kepler starting with pixel-level calibrations all the way to identifying transiting planet signatures and subjecting them to a suite of diagnostic tests to establish or break confidence in their planetary nature. Detecting small, rocky planets transiting Sun-like stars presents a variety of daunting challenges, including achieving an unprecedented photometric precision of ∼20 ppm on 6.5-hour timescales, supporting the science operations, management, and repeated reprocessing of the accumulating data stream.
The scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems. This is achieved by surveying a large sample of stars to:
- Determine the abundance of terrestrial and larger planets in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars;
- Determine the distribution of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets;
- Estimate how many planets are in multiple-star systems;
- Determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivities, radii, masses and densities of short-period giant planets;
- Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques; and
- Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.
This repository contains the source code of the Science Data Processing Pipeline.
The top-level directory contains the following files:
- kscrm.pdf
The Kepler Source Code Road Map. This document contains most of the information normally found in GitHub README files. Please read this first. - source-code
The source code itself. - parameters
The configuration details for the last run of the Kepler Science Data Processing Pipeline. - MATHWORKS-LIMITED-LICENSE.docx
The license for files from MathWorks. - NASA-OPEN-SOURCE-AGREEMENT.doc
The license for every other file.
For questions on the science, algorithms, and MATLAB code, please contact Jon Jenkins <Jon.Jenkins@nasa.gov>, Co-Investigator for Data Processing.
For questions on the "plumbing" and Java code, please contact Bill Wohler <Bill.Wohler@nasa.gov>, Senior Software Engineer.
The Kepler Science Data Processing Pipeline code is released under the NASA Open Source Agreement Version 1.3 license.
Code provided by MathWorks is released under the MathWorks Limited License.
Copyright © 2017 United States Government as represented by the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. All Rights Reserved.
NASA acknowledges the SETI Institute’s primary role in authoring and producing the Kepler Data Processing Pipeline under Cooperative Agreement Nos. NNA04CC63A, NNX07AD96A, NNX07AD98A, NNX11AI13A, NNX11AI14A, NNX13AD01A & NNX13AD16A.
This file is available under the terms of the NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA). You should have received a copy of this agreement with the Kepler source code; see the file NASA-OPEN-SOURCE-AGREEMENT.doc.
No Warranty: THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE WILL CONFORM TO SPECIFICATIONS, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR FREEDOM FROM INFRINGEMENT, ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE WILL BE ERROR FREE, OR ANY WARRANTY THAT DOCUMENTATION, IF PROVIDED, WILL CONFORM TO THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE. THIS AGREEMENT DOES NOT, IN ANY MANNER, CONSTITUTE AN ENDORSEMENT BY GOVERNMENT AGENCY OR ANY PRIOR RECIPIENT OF ANY RESULTS, RESULTING DESIGNS, HARDWARE, SOFTWARE PRODUCTS OR ANY OTHER APPLICATIONS RESULTING FROM USE OF THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE. FURTHER, GOVERNMENT AGENCY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES AND LIABILITIES REGARDING THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE, IF PRESENT IN THE ORIGINAL SOFTWARE, AND DISTRIBUTES IT "AS IS."
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