NASA Kepler Space Telescope Discovers Earth-Like Planet

First Posted: Apr 17, 2014 03:54 PM EDT
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The $600 million Kepler spacecraft, launched on March 6, 2009, is armed with a 0.95-meter aperture and a 105 square degree telescope with a goal to detect and confirm planets in or near the circumstellar habitable zone.

This habitable zone is the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet, which astronomers believe is the case with Kepler-186f - the first Earth-size planet found in the habitable zone. Of the 960-plus planets that Kepler has discovered, this is the first to resemble the size of Earth.

Elisa Quintana, Jason Rowe, and others at the SETI Institute in California spent over a year analyzing the Kepler data before publishing their study in the journal Science. Others not involved with the research or the study were astonished and applauded the authors for their incredible discovery.

"This is an historic discovery-the first Earth-size planet found in the habitable zone around its star," says pioneering planet hunter Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, in this National Geographic article. "This is the best case for a habitable planet yet found."

Orbiting around the red dwarf star, Kepler-186f is 1.1 times wider than Earth and the researchers believe its mass is 1.5 times greater than our planet as well. In contrast to Earth, Kepler-186f only takes 130 days to orbit its star and it receives less warmth from it than Earth does from the sun. And there are many other aspects that the astronomers are questioning about the Earth-like planet. Does it have a strong magnetic field? A substantial greenhouse effect? Is there water on its surface?

"This is a first, validated Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of another star," said the study's lead author, Elisa Quintana in the same article. "Just because a planet is in the habitable zone doesn't mean it is habitable. This is sort of a first step."

Kepler-186f is 493 light-years away and there's more information in the Kepler telescope data that could provide answers. Nonetheless, this discovery is a notable one despite there being much more to find out.

To read more about the discovery of the Kepler-186f Earth-like planet, visit this Los Angeles Times article.

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