In a major celestial milestone, NASA has confirmed the existence of a massive 5,500 planets beyond our own solar system. Not so long ago, we only knew a handful of planets that revolved around our Sun, but the quest to know the world beyond always continued.
NASA has now added a fresh batch of 6 planets outside our immediate solar family to its exoplanet archive, pushing the total beyond the 5,500 mark - after a 31-year journey of astronomical discoveries. The NASA Exoplanet Archive records discoveries that have been confirmed using multiple detection methods.
Scientists have discovered six new exoplanets - HD 36384 b, TOI-198 b, TOI-2095 b, TOI-2095 c, TOI-4860 b, and MWC 758 c - this has pushed the total number of confirmed exoplanets discovered to 5,502.
NASA said just about 31 years ago, in 1992, the first exoplanets were confirmed when scientists detected twin planets Poltergeist and Phobetor orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. In March 2022, just last year, scientists celebrated the passing of 5,000 exoplanets discovered.
There are a number of both space and ground-based instruments and observatories that scientists have used to detect and study exoplanets.
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched in 2018 and has identified thousands of exoplanet candidates and confirmed over 320 planets.
NASA's flagship space telescopes Spitzer, Hubble, and most recently the James Webb Space Telescope have also been used to discover and study exoplanets.
NASA has said that these exoplanets include small, rocky worlds like Earth and "super Earths" which are larger than our own. There are also gas giants several larger than Jupiter and "mini-Neptunes." Some of these planets orbit two stars at once and others stubbornly revolve around the collapsed remnants of dead stars.
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