NASA has confirmed the existence of more than 5,000 exoplanets, or planets that orbit a star outside our solar system. The latest batch of 65 exoplanets – planets outside our immediate solar family – was added to the NASA Exoplanet Archive on March 21, marking the start of the planetary odometer.
The repository contains exoplanet discoveries that have been confirmed using various detection methods or analytical techniques and have been published in peer-reviewed scientific articles.
Small, rocky worlds like Earth, gas giants many times larger than Jupiter, and “hot Jupiters” in scorchingly close orbits around their stars are among the 5,000-plus planets discovered thus far. There are “super-Earths,” which are potentially larger rocky worlds than our own, and “mini-Neptunes,” which are smaller versions of Neptune in our system.
“It’s not just a number,” said Jessie Christiansen, the archive’s science head and a research scientist at Caltech’s NASA Exoplanet Science Institute in Pasadena.
“Each of them is a new world, a completely different planet. I’m enthralled by everyone because we don’t know anything about them “she continued.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is set to launch in 2027, will use a number of approaches to find new exoplanets. Exoplanet atmospheres will be observed by the ESA (European Space Agency) mission ARIEL, which will launch in 2029; a piece of NASA gear aboard called CASE will help zero in on exoplanet clouds and hazes.
