New Planets

NASA’s Kepler space telescope discovers 9 planets that have the potential to harbour life.

16:26 11 May 2016

NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered over 1,200 new planets, nine of which have the potential to harbour life. The single largest finding of planets to date gives scientists hope that they will eventually find another Earth-like planet.

 

According to NASA, 550 of the discovered planets could be rocky like Earth.

 

Natalie Batalha, co-author of the paper and the Kepler mission scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said: "They say not to count our chickens before they're hatched, but that's exactly what these results allow us to do,"

 

"This work will help Kepler reach its full potential by yielding a deeper understanding of the number of stars that harbor potentially habitable, Earth-size planets- a number that's needed to design future missions to search for habitable environments and living worlds."

 

Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters, added: "Before the Kepler space telescope launched, we did not know whether exoplanets were rare or common in the galaxy,"

 

"Thanks to Kepler and the research community, we now know there could be more planets than stars.

"This knowledge informs the future missions that are needed to take us ever-closer to finding out whether we are alone in the universe."