NASA Discovers 10 New Planets Like Earth, So Cool!

NASA revealed 10 new rocky, Earth-sized planets on Tuesday that could potentially have liquid water and can supports life. This discovery comes from the Kepler Mission team which released a survey of 219 potential exoplanets, or simply, 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 newly discovered planets 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 newly discovered 10 Earth-size planets bring the total to 50 that exist in habitable zones around the galaxy.

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.

Let us get to know how the Kepler telescope works. It 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.
Let’s hope that more habitable, Earth-like planets are discovered for the future of mankind!

By: Anamika.