 |
| Exoplanets, credit:NASA |
NASA has officially counted 6,000 exoplanets — and this achievement comes after just about 30 years of searching for worlds beyond our solar system.
"We are stepping into the next significant era of exploration — realms beyond our wildest dreams," a narrator proclaims in a NASA video celebrating this milestone.
"Our quest is to seek out planets that might harbor life, to uncover our cosmic neighbors, and to remind us that the universe still conceals worlds eager to be discovered."he added.
This exciting announcement was made on Wednesday (Sept. 17), coincidentally close to the anniversary of the confirmation of the first exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star: 51 Pegasi b. This gas giant, discovered on Oct. 6, 1995, by astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz.
The first exoplanet was identified in 1992, but it orbited a spinning neutron star, or pulsar, which is quite extraordinary. 51 Pegasi b was the first more conventional exoplanet to be recognized.
As of the time of writing this article, we are actually at 6,007 exoplanets in NASA's tally of alien worlds. The latest addition highlighted by NASA is the grandly named KMT-2023-BLG-1896L b, a Neptune-like planet with a mass approximately 16.35 times that of Earth.
NASA has played a pivotal role in the majority of these exoplanet discoveries, with its TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) contributing 693 finds, while the now-retired Kepler Space Telescope identified over 2,600.Although it can be typed with merely a handful of keystrokes, every member in that club of 6,007 embodies a complete universe, akin to the planets in our solar system that scientists have been examining for centuries.