NASA: Confirmation of 5000 Exoplanets

65 new planets have been discovered by NASA outside the Earth’s solar system. This new discovery takes the total number of exoplanets that have been discovered to over 5000. Some of these discovered planets are Earth-like.

Overview

• These newly discovered 65 planets has marked a milestone in space exploration.
• These 65 newly discovered planets will be studied to look for the presence of microbes, water, gases on the planet’s surface, or even life.
• According to astronomers the Milky Way Galaxy is home to hundreds of billions of such planets and there are so many galaxies present in space.
• The James Webb Space Telescope clicked an image that showed thousands of galaxies and there are chances that each of them has unexplored Earth-like worlds.

Characteristics of the discovered exoplanets
The discovered exoplanets have varied ranges of characteristics and compositions like gas giants which are many times larger than Jupiter, small, rocky worlds similar to Earth, etc. Many “super-Earths,” have also been discovered which are mostly rocky worlds but many times bigger than the earth. Some discovered planets represent a miniature version of Neptune. Some planets have been found to be orbiting two stars at once while some are orbiting dead stars remnants.