Marilyn Thipthorpe
NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope mission just made history, announcing the discovery of 1,284 new exoplanets. This is the most new planets announced at one time, with 9 of them considered to be potentially habitable. A new technique was utilized to make the discoveries, in which scientists were able to determine the possibility that blips in the data are actually planets, not the result of other astronomical objects. In the past, confirmation has come in the form of ground-based telescopes — a time-consuming and expensive route.
The new technique, however, assesses the likelihood that planet candidates really are planets en masse, without the necessity for follow-up. “Before the Kepler space telescope launched, we did not know whether exoplanets were rare or common in the galaxy. Thanks to Kepler and the research community, we now know there could be more planets than stars,” said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters.