Presentation of the Aviation Week Laureate Award to NASA's Kepler Mission, accepted by Roger Hunter (current program manager for Kepler) and James Fanson (Kepler project manager during mission development at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena CA). Photo courtesy Aviation Week (Hunter, left; Fanson, middle; and right: Frank Morring, Senior Space Editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology).

Washington, D.C. -- NASA's Kepler mission has been named winner of the 2012 Aviation Week Laureate Award in the Space category, announced last night at the 55th annual black-tie awards dinner. Accepting the award on behalf of the Kepler mission team were Roger Hunter, Kepler program manager of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and James Fanson, who was the Kepler project manager during mission development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

“With nearly 1,000 scientists throughout the world actively engaged in investigating the bounty of Kepler data, the team is honored to marshal in a new age of planetary discovery," said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at Ames. "We are delighted by the results and of the promise of Kepler's most profound discoveries that await.”

Aviation Week's annual Laureate Awards recognizes individuals and teams for their extraordinary accomplishments. Their achievements embody the spirit of exploration, innovation, vision or any combination of these attributes that inspire others to strive for significant, broad-reaching progress in aviation and aerospace.

Previous winners in the Space category include the Radar Imaging Commercialization Team; the International Space Station program managers; Elon Musk; and Yoshisada Takizawa, Selene project manager, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

See full NASA RELEASE 12-24AR.

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