we had to be able to detect. >> in the beginning, it was a lonely field. very few planets were known. months would go by, not a new planet would be discovered. nevertheless, i knew the field would explode. i'd say, look, i know there's going to be so many planets we're not going to be able to count them all. they didn't believe it. they didn't hire me. then came kepler -- >> three, two, one, zero, and liftoff of the delta 2 rocket with kepler on a search for planets like our own. >> the pressures are building -- >> the kepler space telescope monitored one small section of the sky, and it found thousands of planets. another earth is undoubtedly out there, and our own mickey way galaxy we have hundreds of billions of stars. our universe has hundreds of billions of galaxies.