Kepler | NASA
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html
The National Space Club honors Kepler for revolutionizing ... used to balance NASA's Kepler spacecraft, keeping the telescope stable enough to ...
Media requests for interviews with the Kepler mission should be
directed to Michele
Johnson, public affairs officer at NASA's Ames Research
Center.
Briefing resources:
Panelists: Biographies (PDF,
150KB)
The histogram shows the number of planets by size
for all known exoplanets. The blue bars on the histogram represents all the
exoplanets known, by size, before the Kepler Planet Bonanza announcement on Feb.
26, 2014. The gold bars on the histogram represent Kepler's newly-verified
planets.
-- Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet exploration
program scientist, NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington
-- Jack
Lissauer, planetary scientist, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett
Field, Calif.
-- Jason Rowe, research scientist, SETI
Institute, Mountain View, Calif.
-- Sara Seager, professor
of planetary science and physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, Mass.
Animations: Captions and
credits (PDF, 50KB)
The histogram shows the number of planet
discoveries by year for roughly the past two decades of the exoplanet search.
The blue bar shows previous planet discoveries, the red bar shows previous
Kepler planet discoveries, the gold bar displays the 715 new planets verified by
multiplicity.
Social Media: #Kepler715
General Kepler Image and Video Resources:
Related Links:
Media contact:
Michele
JohnsonAmes Research Center, Moffett Field,
Calif.650-604-6982
NASA's Kepler Mission Announces a Planet Bonanza, 715 New Worlds
NASA's Kepler mission announced Wednesday the discovery of 715 new planets.
These newly-verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems
much like our own solar system.
Nearly 95 percent of these planets are smaller than Neptune, which is almost
four times the size of Earth. This discovery marks a significant increase in the
number of known small-sized planets more akin to Earth than previously
identified exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system.
"The Kepler team continues to amaze and excite us with their planet hunting
results," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate in Washington. "That these new planets and solar systems
look somewhat like our own, portends a great future when we have the James Webb
Space Telescope in space to characterize the new worlds.”
Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system roughly two
decades ago, verification has been a laborious planet-by-planet process. Now,
scientists have a statistical technique that can be applied to many planets at
once when they are found in systems that harbor more than one planet around the
same star.
To verify this bounty of planets, a research team co-led by Jack Lissauer,
planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.,
analyzed stars with more than one potential planet, all of which were detected
in the first two years of Kepler's observations -- May 2009 to March 2011.
The research team used a technique called verification by multiplicity, which
relies in part on the logic of probability. Kepler observes 150,000 stars, and
has found a few thousand of those to have planet candidates. If the candidates
were randomly distributed among Kepler's stars, only a handful would have more
than one planet candidate. However, Kepler observed hundreds of stars that have
multiple planet candidates. Through a careful study of this sample, these 715
new planets were verified.
This method can be likened to the behavior we know of lions and lionesses. In
our imaginary savannah, the lions are the Kepler stars and the lionesses are the
planet candidates. The lionesses would sometimes be observed grouped together
whereas lions tend to roam on their own. If you see two lions it could be a lion
and a lioness or it could be two lions. But if more than two large felines are
gathered, then it is very likely to be a lion and his pride. Thus, through
multiplicity the lioness can be reliably identified in much the same way
multiple planet candidates can be found around the same star.
"Four years ago, Kepler began a string of announcements of first hundreds,
then thousands, of planet candidates --but they were only candidate worlds,"
said Lissauer. "We've now developed a process to verify multiple planet
candidates in bulk to deliver planets wholesale, and have used it to unveil a
veritable bonanza of new worlds."
These multiple-planet systems are fertile grounds for studying individual
planets and the configuration of planetary neighborhoods. This provides clues to
planet formation.
Four of these new planets are less than 2.5 times the size of Earth and orbit
in their sun's habitable zone, defined as the range of distance from a star
where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for
life-giving liquid water.
One of these new habitable zone planets, called Kepler-296f, orbits a star
half the size and 5 percent as bright as our sun. Kepler-296f is twice the size
of Earth, but scientists do not know whether the planet is a gaseous world, with
a thick hydrogen-helium envelope, or it is a water world surrounded by a deep
ocean.
"From this study we learn planets in these multi-systems are small and their
orbits are flat and circular -- resembling pancakes -- not your classical view
of an atom," said Jason Rowe, research scientist at the SETI Institute in
Mountain View, Calif., and co-leader of the research. "The more we explore the
more we find familiar traces of ourselves amongst the stars that remind us of
home."
This latest discovery brings the confirmed count of planets outside our solar
system to nearly 1,700. As we continue to reach toward the stars, each discovery
brings us one step closer to a more accurate understanding of our place in the
galaxy.
Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially
habitable Earth-size planets. Discoveries include more than 3,600 planet
candidates, of which 961 have been verified as bona-fide worlds.
The findings papers will be published March 10 in The Astrophysical Journal
and are available for download at:
Ames is responsible for the Kepler mission concept, 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.
For more information about the Kepler space telescope, visit:
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
