NASA Update: Kepler Telescope Discovers Over 1,000 Exoplanets, Some Might Sustain Life? [VIDEO]
In a massive announcement on Tuesday, NASA revealed that its ongoing Kepler mission has achieved yet another milestone. In its most notable discovery yet, the powerful space telescope discovered 1,284 exoplanets, with about nine of the celestial beings possibly capable of sustaining life.
With Kepler's huge discovery, the number of confirmed exoplanets that have been discovered so far has practically doubled. Currently, the total number of confirmed exoplanets number 3,200, with 2,235 of those being discovered by the Kepler Telescope.
Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA, stated his commendation for yet another discovery.
"Kepler is the first telescope for detecting small rocky planets in the habitable zone of their stars. Thanks to Kepler, we know exoplanets are common, most stars in our galaxy have planetary systems and they are potentially habitable planets. Knowing this is the first step to addressing whether are we alone in the universe," he said.
Since launching in 2009, the $600 million Kepler mission has been intensively watching more than 150,00 stars in one part of the sky in order to determine the possible number of exoplanets in the area. The powerful telescope was able to determine the number of exoplanets by measuring the dimming of stars as potential planets pass across.
So far, Kepler has found a fairly good number of exoplanets. Even before its recent, mammoth discovery, the mission has already discovered thousands of exoplanets including 550 which possibly have the same topography as the Earth.
Among this number, however, lies what the Kepler mission dubs as goldilocks exoplanets, which are rocky planets located in their respective Solar System's habitable zone. Of course, considering that these planets must have similar topography as the Earth while being at an ideal distance from their Solar System's central star, such exoplanets are indeed extremely rare.
Prior to Kepler's most recent discovery, the number of goldilocks planets were about a dozen. With the nine that was recently discovered, however, there are now 21 exoplanets that might very well be able to support human life.
NASA has stated that the Kepler mission is set to end on October 2017.
