Kepler survived an emergency last month, when some kind of 'transient event. This statistical analysis method can be applied to many planet candidates simultaneously, according to Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at Princeton University and lead author of a paper describing the findings in The Astrophysical Journal. The latest trove of planets was confirmed by a new statistical method, instead of the time-consuming, one-by-one process previously used. 'This knowledge informs the future missions that are needed to take us ever closer to finding out whether we are alone in the universe.' Thanks to Kepler and the research community, we now know there could be more planets than stars,' said Paul Hertz, astrophysics division director at NASA headquarters. 'Before the Kepler space telescope launched, we did not know whether exoplanets were rare or common in the galaxy. However, Kepler has already opened up a great deal about the galaxy that surrounds us. very close,' one light-year equals about six trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers), and no spacecraft or technology exists to travel that far. 'If you ask yourself the question, where is the nearest potentially habitable planet likely to be, you find that it is going to be within about 11 light-years,' said Natalie Batalha, Kepler mission scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center.Īlthough she described that distance as 'astronomically speaking. That means even the most advanced space telescopes now being built, including the James Webb Space Telescope, may not be able to shed much more light on the nature of life - if it exists - on another of these distant exoplanets.

However, Kepler is a 'statistical mission,' NASA scientists said, and is not designed to probe further into the environmental conditions of planets that exist in the so-called 'Goldilocks zone' of their stars - neither too hot nor too cold to sustain life. The addition of these nine means that 21 exoplanets now are known to be circling their stars in the so-called 'habitable zone,' and may harbor life.

Kepler telescope nasa