Pace quickens in search for Earth-like planets

NASA's Kepler space telescope has collected data indicating Earth-like planets are relatively common in our region of the Milky Way galaxy. /University of Hertfordshire image via NPR


The U.S. space program no longer features the human drama of manned missions "pushing the envelope," but NASA is producing a steady diet of scientific discovery in our solar system and from distant stars.

On Jan. 6, NASA scientists presented data from the Kepler space telescope that indicate planets with Earth-like qualities are relatively common in the Milky Way. Since 2009, Kepler has been scanning more than 150,000 stars in our neighborhood of the Milky Way looking for planets with orbits around their stars that would be suitable for the formation of liquid water ... the so-called habitable zone of a solar system. The logic behind the Kepler mission is pretty simple: the best way to find life beyond our solar system is to find places where life as we know it has a chance to survive.

According to NASA, Kepler "is specifically designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover dozens of Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets."

The data announced Monday shows a dramatic increase in the number of potential Earth-like planet discoveries over the past year, with the number of Earth-sized planet discoveries increasing 43 percent.

"This is really saying, habitable zone planets are abundant," said Meg Schwamb, a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University who is helping to analyze the Kepler data.