NASA Has Made A Huge Discovery About Planets Outside Our Solar System

[Carmen Elsa Irarragorri Wyland]

NASA Has Made A Huge Discovery About Planets Outside Our Solar System

Has NASA found evidence of life in space? Some of the world's leading voices on life beyond Earth will gather for a NASA press conference Wednesday where an important announcement on planets outside our solar system was expected to be made, NASA announced Monday. Exoplanets are widely believed to be the best hope of finding life elsewhere in the universe. 

NASA vowed to broadcast the announcement featuring astronomers and planetary scientists from across the world on NASA Television and the agency's website. The space agency was encouraging the public to ask questions during the briefing on Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA. 

The announcement comes as NASA has also been working to send a lander to Europa, Jupiter’s ice moon, to explore the potential for extraterrestrial life. The project includes determining whether life can thrive on Europa.

Seven Earth-sized planets have been observed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope around a tiny, nearby, ultra-cool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1. Three of these planets are firmly in the habitable zone.

Over 21 days, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope measured the drop in light as each planet passed in front of the star. Spitzer was able to identify a total of seven rocky worlds, including three in the habitable zone, where liquid water might be found.

The video features interviews with Sean Carey, manager of the Spitzer Science Center, Caltech/IPAC; Nikole Lewis, James Webb Space Telescope project scientist, Space Telescope Science Institute; and Michaël Gillon, principal investigator, TRAPPIST, University of Liege, Belgium.

The system has been revealed through observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the ground-based TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) telescope, as well as other ground-based observatories. The system was named for the TRAPPIST telescope.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at Caltech/IPAC. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer and http://spitzer.caltech.edu.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/science/nasa-teases-discovery-beyond-solar-...