Natalie Batalia hunt for exoplanets, Earth-sized planets beyond our solar system that might

have liquid water and harbor life.

She works with the Kepler Mission at NASA, searching among millions of stars that emit

compelling signals captured during the four-year mission of the Kepler Space Telescope.

For her, it's only a matter of time, a when, not an if, that we discover planets where

we know life exists.

And I've never met anyone who speaks more intriguingly than Natalie Batalia about the

connection between science, love, and gratitude for life.

She is a luminous voice, for the way exploring the heavens as we do that now is bringing the

beauty of the cosmos and the exuberance of scientific discovery closer home to us all.

We're extending our senses out into the cosmos in a very real tangible way, and that makes

it so much easier to capture our imagination, to inspire us, you know, through the curiosity

rover.

We are standing there in our hiking boots on the surface of Mars.

Man, I can, I can practically hear the crunching of the dirt underneath my feet.

You know, it feels like I could bend down and pick up a rock and toss it over that hill

over there, you know?

So in a very real way, these experiments are extending our senses out into the cosmos.

I'm Chris DeTippet, and this is Unbeing.

Natalie Batalia is a research astronomer at NASA Ames Research Center and a mission scientist

with the Kepler Space Telescope.

I spoke with her in 2012.

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