07 Mar, 2018

As early as next month or as late as June, NASA plans to launch the next generation planet-finder, an orbiting telescope called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which will have a field of view 400 times that of the Kepler instrument. Since its launch on March 6, 2009, Kepler has discovered 3,705 confirmed planets with 612 in multiple-planet systems and 4,496 candidate planets, according to the latest count. The new orbiter promises to open the heavens, in terms of planetary

27 Feb, 2017

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of NASA’s latest exoplanet discovery, but I did. On Feb. 20, a news release from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, notified the world that a major announcement about planets around other stars was imminent: "NASA will hold a news conference at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST) Wednesday, Feb. 22, to present new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets. The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency's