There is also the promise of more such additions as NASA readies its $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope for planet-gazing in deep space.
Astronomers have added the 5,000th exoplanet to the NASA Exoplanet Archive, the agency’s officials at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California have said. NASA hit the milestone mark following the discovery of 65 new exoplanets. The 65 new exoplanets will be studied for compositions that might support the presence of microbes, water, and gases or even life.
“Not so long ago, we lived in a universe with only a small number of known planets, all of them orbiting our Sun,” NASA said in a statement.
“But a new raft of discoveries marks a scientific high point: More than 5,000 planets are now confirmed to exist beyond our solar system.”
Any planet that exists beyond our solar system is an exoplanet. Most of these orbit other stars. However, free-floating exoplanets — rogue planets — orbit the galactic centre and are not tethered to any star. Most exoplanets discovered thus far were found in a relatively small region of the Milky Way galaxy. NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope suggests that the galaxy contains more planets than stars.
“The planetary odometer turned on March 21, with the latest batch of 65 exoplanets – planets outside our immediate solar family – added to the NASA Exoplanet Archive. The archive records exoplanet discoveries that appear in peer-reviewed, scientific papers, and that have been confirmed using multiple detection methods or by analytical techniques” NASA said.
The US space agency measures exoplanets’ diameters and masses to see their compositions — ranging from very rocky (like Venus and Earth) to gas-rich (like Saturn and Jupiter). Elements similar to those found in our solar system also make up these exoplanets. However, their mixes can differ. Some planets can be dominated by ice or water, while iron or carbon dominates others. Lava worlds covered in molten seas, puffy planets with the density of Styrofoam, and dense cores of planets still orbiting stars have been discovered.
“The 5,000-plus planets found so far include small, rocky worlds like Earth, gas giants many times larger than Jupiter, and ‘hot Jupiters’ in scorchingly close orbits around their stars. There are ‘super-Earths,’ which are possible rocky worlds bigger than our own, and ‘mini-Neptunes,’ smaller versions of our system’s Neptune. Add to the mix planets orbiting two stars at once and planets stubbornly orbiting the collapsed remnants of dead stars.”
NASA hit the milestone figure following a surge in recent discoveries. There is also the promise of more such additions as NASA readies its $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope for planet-gazing in deep space.