It was announced on Tuesday at the conference of the American Astronomical Society that NASA’s planet-seeking Kepler spacecraft has already found more than 100 planets.
According to National Geographic, the Kepler spacecraft, which had recently suffered from minor technical malfunctions, has observed a multitude of new planets, several of which are in multi-planet systems whose stars are brighter than any in the original Kepler field.
During its exploration the Kepler spacecraft has found three planets that are bigger than Earth. What’s more, it has spotted a planet in the Hyades star cluster which is the nearest star cluster to Earth.
The Kepler mission has also resulted in the discovery of a planet being ripped apart by the white dwarf star that it orbits while it orbits it.
In addition to the over 100 planets that have been discovered, there are 234 possible planets that have been observed and are awaiting confirmation, said Andrew Vanderburg of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“It’s probing different types of planets,” says Tom Barclay of NASA’s Ames Research Center in reference to the planets that that the Kepler mission had originally been searching for versus the planets that it is finding now.
“We’re focusing on stars that are much brighter, stars that are nearer by, stars that are more easy to understand and observe from Earth. The idea here is to find the best systems, the most interesting systems.”
These new discoveries come after a malfunction that the Kepler spacecraft suffered in 2013 that rendered it unable to stare at the exact spot while looking for new planets.
A change in the craft’s steering ability has re-instilled the Kepler spacecraft with the capability of carrying out its mission of finding a large number of new planets.