EXOPLANET EXPLORATION

Planets Beyond Our Solar System

We SALUTE all the staffs working in NASA.

To date, they have identified Exoplanets for Habitable Zone in “Quantity and Quality” for future generations.

Mary Voytek, senior scientist and director of NASA’s Astrobiology Program:

 “I don’t do (direct) exoplanet research, but I happen to understand it well. We spent all of our research time before we knew about exoplanets understanding our own solar system — how the planets formed. Observing exoplanets allows us to determine whether or not we actually understand those processes, even in our own solar system. In fact, what we’ve seen so far is that most stellar systems don’t look like our solar system. What finding exoplanets does for us is open up a vast exploration area to look for other habitable worlds. And it has upped the likelihood that we are not alone.”

Matthew W. Smith, systems engineer, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

“I search for exoplanets because I want to know whether there’s another Earth-like world out there, and whether life could exist outside our solar system. I think about these questions every time I’m in a dark spot looking up at the night sky.”

National Aeronautics and Space AdministrationPage Last Updated: Jan 5, 2022Page Editor: Gary DainesNASA Official: Brian Dunbar

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EXOPLANETS

An exoplanet is a planet orbiting a star other than the Sun. Of particular interest are planets that may orbit in their star’s habitable zone, the distance from a star where temperatures allow liquid water to persist on a planet’s surface, given a suitable atmosphere. Since water is necessary for life as we know it, its presence is required for worlds to be considered capable of supporting life. Exoplanets can also teach us more about planets in the universe, such as the diversity of planets in the galaxy, how they interact with their host stars and with each other, and how common solar systems like ours really are. Using a wide variety of methods, astronomers have discovered more than 3,700 exoplanets to date, largely thanks to NASA's Kepler/K2 mission. Other NASA missions also play a key role in detecting exoplanets. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which launched in April 2018, will monitor 200,000 of the brightest dwarf stars for transiting exoplanets. Future missions like the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study these discovered planets in greater detail, helping determine their composition. Researchers in NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration are leveraging work across disciplines to better understand exoplanets. Areas like planet-star interactions, planetary formation, and even study of the Earth itself enable researchers to develop tools to learn more about how exoplanets evolve, and what ingredients are necessary to support life.