Recent Discoveries of NASA

2.  Any planet beyond our solar system is
called an exoplanet.
 715 exoplanets have been discovered
by NASA yet.
 As of mid-March 2018, Kepler has
discovered 2,342
confirmed exoplanets and revealed the
existence of perhaps 2,245 others. The
total number of planets discovered by
all observatories is 3,706.

3.  Planets: K2-146 b and c
 Planet b, found by multiple science teams, was
announced in 2018. A team led by astronomers
at the University of Chicago announced the
discovery of planet c in a just-published paper.
Both discoveries relied on data from NASA’s
Kepler space telescope.
 The latest research papers on this planets was
published in the month of July 2019.
 The research paper was released by Aaron
Hamann and Benjamin Montet.

4.  Name of the exoplanet: K-2 18b
 For the first time, researchers have detected
water vapor signatures in the atmosphere of
a planet beyond our solar system that
resides in the "habitable zone," the region
around a star in which liquid water could
potentially pool on the surface of a rocky
planet.
 The star is also known as “Super- Earth”.

6.  K2-18b, an exoplanet around a small red
dwarf star about 110 light-years away in
the constellation Leo.
 If confirmed by further studies, this will be
the only exoplanet known to have both
water in its atmosphere and temperatures
that could sustain liquid water on a rocky
surface.
 Liquid water would only be possible if the
planet turns out to be terrestrial in nature,
rather than resembling a small version of
Neptune.

7.  The authors of the paper, published in Nature
Astronomy, believe that other molecules,
including nitrogen and methane, may be
present but they remain undetectable with
current observations.
 Further studies are required to estimate cloud
coverage and the percentage of atmospheric
water present. A paper from a different team
of scientists using Hubble observations has
been submitted to the Astronomical Journal.

9.  https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1600/a-
hubble-first-water-vapor-found-on-
habitable-zone-exoplanet/
 https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1592/disc
overy-alert-finding-planets-where-they-
shouldnt-be/
 https://www.nasa.gov/