NASA Spacecraft Poised to Find Thousands of Alien Worlds
Within just 50 light-years from Earth, there are about 1,560 stars, likely orbited by several thousand planets. About a thousand of these extrasolar planets — known as exoplanets — may be rocky and have a composition similar to Earth’s. Some may even harbor life. Over 99% of these alien worlds remain undiscovered — but this is about to change. With NASA’s new exoplanet-hunter space telescope TESS, the all-sky search is on for possibly habitable planets close to our solar system. TESS — orbiting Earth every 13.7 days — and ground-based telescopes are poised to find hundreds of planets over the … Read more
