Cosmic milestone: NASA confirms 5,000 exoplanets NASAJPL
Not so long ago, we lived in a universe with only a small number of known planets, all of them orbiting our sun. 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.
"It's not just a number," said Jessie Christiansen, science lead for the archive and a research scientist with the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech in Pasadena."Each one of them is a new world, a brand-new planet. I get excited about every one because we don't know anything about them." Finding just three planets around this spinning star essentially opened the floodgates, said Alexander Wolszczan, the lead author on the paper that—30 years ago—unveiled the first planets to be confirmed outside our solar system.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, expected to launch in 2027, will make new exoplanet discoveries using a variety of methods. The ESA mission ARIEL, launching in 2029, will observe exoplanet atmospheres; a piece of NASA technology aboard, called CASE, will help zero in on exoplanet clouds and hazes.
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