".. El descubrimiento de este planeta es un paso muy significativo para encontrar planetas similares a La Tierra lo dijo : Paul Hertz, Director de NASA's Astrophysics Division .."
Agregó: que las futuras misiones de la NASA es descubrir exoplanetas rocosos para poder terminar la composición y las condiciones atmosféricas apropiadas para la existencia de un genero humano, que puedan ser parecidas a La Tierra tal como nosotros lo conocemos..."
Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186 system about
500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The system is also home
to four inner planets, seen lined up in orbit around a host star that is half
the size and mass of the sun.
Image Credit:
NASA Ames/SETI
Institute/JPL-Caltech
Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first
Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the "habitable zone" -- the range of
distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting
planet. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that planets the size of Earth
exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun.
While planets have previously been found in the habitable zone, they are all
at least 40 percent larger in size than Earth and understanding their makeup is
challenging. Kepler-186f is more reminiscent of Earth.
"The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds
like our planet Earth," said Paul Hertz, NASA's Astrophysics Division director
at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Future NASA missions, like the
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope, will
discover the nearest rocky exoplanets and determine their composition and
atmospheric conditions, continuing humankind's quest to find truly Earth-like
worlds."
Although the size of Kepler-186f is known, its mass and composition are not.
Previous research, however, suggests that a planet the size of Kepler-186f is
likely to be rocky.
"We know of just one planet where life exists -- Earth. When we search for
life outside our solar system we focus on finding planets with characteristics
that mimic that of Earth," said Elisa Quintana, research scientist at the SETI
Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and lead
author of the paper published today in the journal Science. "Finding a habitable
zone planet comparable to Earth in size is a major step forward."
Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186 system, about 500 light-years from
Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The system is also home to four companion
planets, which orbit a star half the size and mass of our sun. The star is
classified as an M dwarf, or red dwarf, a class of stars that makes up 70
percent of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
"M dwarfs are the most numerous stars," said Quintana. "The first signs of
other life in the galaxy may well come from planets orbiting an M dwarf."
Kepler-186f orbits its star once every 130-days and receives one-third the
energy from its star that Earth gets from the sun, placing it nearer the outer
edge of the habitable zone. On the surface of Kepler-186f, the brightness of its
star at high noon is only as bright as our sun appears to us about an hour
before sunset.
"Being in the habitable zone does not mean we know this planet is habitable.
The temperature on the planet is strongly dependent on what kind of atmosphere
the planet has," said Thomas Barclay, research scientist at the Bay Area
Environmental Research Institute at Ames, and co-author of the paper.
"Kepler-186f can be thought of as an Earth-cousin rather than an Earth-twin. It
has many properties that resemble Earth."
The four companion planets, Kepler-186b, Kepler-186c, Kepler-186d, and
Kepler-186e, whiz around their sun every four, seven, 13, and 22 days,
respectively, making them too hot for life as we know it. These four inner
planets all measure less than 1.5 times the size of Earth.
The next steps in the search for distant life include looking for true
Earth-twins -- Earth-size planets orbiting within the habitable zone of a
sun-like star -- and measuring the their chemical compositions. The Kepler Space
Telescope, which simultaneously and continuously measured the brightness of more
than 150,000 stars, is NASA's first mission capable of detecting Earth-size
planets around stars like our sun.
Ames is responsible for Kepler's ground system development, mission
operations, and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace &
Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and
supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space
Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science
Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data.
Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and was funded by the agency's Science
Mission Directorate.
The SETI Institute is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to
scientific research, education and public outreach. The mission of the SETI
Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and
prevalence of life in the universe.
For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:
