Yahoo – AFP,
June 19, 2017
This 2016 handout illustration obtained courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech shows the K2-33, at the time one of the youngest exoplanets detected to date. (AFP Photo/ NASA/JPL-Caltech) |
Washington
(AFP) - NASA revealed Monday 10 new rocky, Earth-sized planets that could
potentially have liquid water and support life.
The Kepler
mission team released a survey of 219 potential exoplanets -- planets outside
of our solar system -- that had been detected by the space observatory launched
in 2009 to scan the Milky Way galaxy.
Ten of the
new discoveries were orbiting their suns at a distance similar to Earth's orbit
around the sun, the so-called habitable zone that could potentially have liquid
water and sustain life.
Kepler has
already discovered 4,034 potential exoplanets, 2,335 of which have been
confirmed by other telescopes as actual planets.
The 10 new
Earth-size planets bring the total to 50 that exist in habitable zones around
the galaxy.
"This
carefully-measured catalog is the foundation for directly answering one of
astronomy's most compelling questions -- how many planets like our Earth are in
the galaxy?" said Susan Thompson, a Kepler research scientist and lead
author of the latest study.
The latest
findings were released at the Fourth Kepler and K2 science conference being
held this week at NASA's Ames research center in California.
The Kepler
telescope detects the presence of planets by registering minuscule drops in a
star's brightness that occurs when a planet crosses in front of it, a movement
known as a transit.
The
findings were compiled from data gathered during the first four years of the
mission, which scientists processed to determine the size and composition of
the planets observed.
The
scientists found that the newly discovered planets tended to fall into two
distinct categories -- smaller, rocky planets that are usually around 75
percent bigger than Earth, and much larger, gaseous planets similar in size to
Neptune.
NASA said
the latest catalog is the most complete and detailed survey of potential
exoplanets yet compiled. The telescope has studied some 150,000 stars in the
Cygnus constellation, a survey which NASA said is now complete.
“The Kepler
data set is unique, as it is the only one containing a population of these near
Earth-analogs -- planets with roughly the same size and orbit as Earth,” said
Mario Perez of NASA's Astrophysics Division. “Understanding their frequency in
the galaxy will help inform the design of future NASA missions to directly
image another Earth.”
The mission
ran into technical problems in 2013 when mechanisms used to turn the spacecraft
failed, but the telescope has continued searching for potentially habitable
planets as part of its K2 project.
As of next
year, NASA will continue its scan of the galaxy using Kepler's successor, the
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which will spend two years
observing the 200,000 brightest nearby stars for Earth-like worlds.
Scientists
also hope the James Webb Space telescope, which will replace the Hubble
telescope in 2018, will be able to detect the molecular make-up of atmospheres
of exoplanets, including the possibility of finding signatures of potential
life forms.
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