NASA Discovers New Planets

Image from www.nasa.gov

Rubina Chowdhury, Editor-At-Large

Is there life outside of Earth? Do aliens really exist? Could humans possibly inhabit other planets? All of these questions are relevant to the Kepler Mission, a project by NASA intended to “discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine the fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy that might have such planets”, according to the space program’s official website. Kepler, launched in March of 2009, was the first ever NASA mission initiated to explore the fascinating idea of other worlds that has sparked the human imagination in movies and books for decades.

 

In July 2015, the Kepler space telescope identified 4,302 potential planets by capturing their discrete signals. When planets pass, or transit, in front of their stars, the decrease in brightness gets picked up by the telescope allowing for a planet to be distinguished. Further analysis has recently concluded the verification the of 1,284 of these planets. In other words, there is over a ninety-nine percent chance that there are at least 1,284 more planets that actually exist. NASA claims that of these new planets, 550 are most likely rocky similar to Earth, and 9 orbit in the sun’s habitable zone which allows for surface temperature liquid to be available. This new information is an enormous game-changer for outer space research and ideology. It may be increased evidence that other life forms are present in the solar system or perhaps just feeds into our dreams of vacationing throughout the galaxy.

NASA plans on continuing research in 2018 with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite which will use the same technique to monitor 200,000 bright stars nearby and hunt for planets the size of Earth as well as larger.