NASA Nearly Doubles Discovery of Known Planets Without Active Kepler Space Telescope

The Kepler Space Telescope has been inactive since May of 2013, but the probe's data has led astronomer's to discover 715 new planets, NASA Ames Research Center reported today.

The space telescope's mission was suspended last May because its fine-pointing system failed. It is unclear when it will be reactivated, but the data it has already collected over its four plus years of operation is still being examined and studied by NASA's team.

The number of known planets beyond our solar system has increased to almost 1,700 after today's discoveries. Various scientific papers about the discoveries of these new planets will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. All of the Kepler Telescope's discoveries can be found on NASA's "Kepler Discoveries" webpage.

The $600 million Kepler mission was launched in 2009 with specific scientific objectives. Its main goal is to explore the structure and diversity of the universe's planetary systems by surveying samples of stars. The space telescope's technology was designed to "determine the abundance of terrestrial and larger planets in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars; determine the distribution of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets; determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivities, sizes, masses and densities of short-period giant planets and; determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems," as listed on the NASA Kepler webpage. Although there are more, these are the foundational goals of the program.

The 715 new planets are said to be distributed among 305 different star systems, and the number of Earth-sized planets increased by 400%. Jason Rowe, a member of the Kepler science team, said that four of the newly discovered planets are about 2.5 times wider than Earth. Kepler 174d, Kepler 296f, Kepler 298d, and Kepler 309c are also said to be located in a habitable zone where water may exist in liquid form, implying that human life may exist beyond our solar system.

To read more about the big discovery for astronomy, visit this NBC News article.