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We've officially found 6,000 exoplanets, NASA says: 'We're entering the
next great chapter of exploration'
News
By Monisha Ravisetti published 20 hours ago

"There's one we haven't found rCo a planet just like ours. At least, not
yet."

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An artist's illustration of the various exoplanets found, with rows
of colorful planets of all colors and sizes over a dark background
An artist's illustration of the exoplanets NASA has found. (Image
credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)
It might sound hard to believe, but NASA's exoplanet count just reached
6,000 rCo and that's with only about 30 years of hunting worlds beyond our solar system. In fact, only three years ago, that figure was at 5,000.
At least at face value, the rate of discovery appears to be exponential
rCo which is good, because, theoretically, there should be billions more worlds out there for us to locate.

"We're entering the next great chapter of exploration rCo worlds beyond
our imagination," a narrator says in a NASA video about the milestone.
"To look for planets that could support life, to find our cosmic
neighbors and to remind us the universe still holds worlds waiting to be found."

The news was announced on Wednesday (Sept. 17), which is serendipitously
close to the anniversary of when scientists confirmed the existence of
the first exoplanet around a sun-like star: 51 Pegasi b. Discovered on
Oct. 6, 1995 by astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, 51 Pegasi b
is a gas giant 0.64 times as massive as Jupiter that sits approximately
50 light-years from where you're sitting. (To be clear, the very first exoplanet discovery fell in 1992, but that one was around a spinning
neutron star, or pulsar. And pulsars are pretty wild. 51 Pegasi b was
the first more "normal" exoplanet to be identified.) The right thing to
do would be to end this paragraph with the 6,000 exoplanet discovery counterpart to 51 Pegasi b, but that's unfortunately not possible.

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This brings us to the complexity of NASA's announcement. "Confirmed
planets are added to the count on a rolling basis by scientists from
around the world, so no single planet is considered the 6,000th entry,"
the agency said in a statement. "There are more than 8,000 additional candidate planets awaiting confirmation."

In fact, as of writing this article, we're technically at 6,007
exoplanets in NASA's alien world tally. The "new discovery" featured by
NASA is the heftily named KMT-2023-BLG-1896L b, a Neptune-like world
with a mass equal to about 16.35 Earths. NASA is also responsible for
the bulk of those exoplanet finds, with its TESS (Transiting Exoplanet
Survey Satellite) count being at 693 and now-retired Kepler Space
Telescope having found over 2,600.

And even though it can be written with just a few keystrokes, each
member of that 6,007-strong club represents an entire world comparable
to the planets of our solar system, which scientists have been
scrutinizing for centuries.

There are 2,035 Neptune-like worlds in that count, in reference to
exoplanets with similar sizes to our solar system's very own Neptune and Uranus. These tend to have "hydrogen and helium-dominated atmospheres
with cores of rock and heavier metals," according to NASA. ("Metals"
doesn't necessarily mean metallic elements. Somewhat confusingly, in astronomy, that just refers to elements heavier than hydrogen and helium).

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There are 1,984 gas giants (think Jupiter relatives) and 1,761
super-Earths in the court rCo the latter group is not to be confused with Earth 2.0 candidates. Super-Earths simply refer to exoplanets that are a little larger than Earth but still lighter than planets like Neptune and Uranus.

NASA's exoplanet count further includes 700 "terrestrial planets," or
rocky worlds, and maybe most fascinatingly, seven of "unknown" types.

Indeed, breaking those categories down even further would require
stretching your brain to a place where you can imagine a two-faced world half-covered in lava, an orb made of diamond that can regrow its
atmosphere, one zipping through space at over 1 million mph (1.6 million
kph) and the physical embodiment of hell.

"Each of the different types of planets we discover gives us information
about the conditions under which planets can form and, ultimately, how
common planets like Earth might be, and where we should be looking for
them," Dawn Gelino, head of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program,
located at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern
California, said in a statement. "If we want to find out if werCOre alone
in the universe, all of this knowledge is essential."

Still, in the agency's video about the milestone, an existential aspect
of exoplanet-hunting is mentioned. "There's one we haven't found rCo a
planet just like ours."

At least, not yet."

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions,
night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment,
let us know at: community@space.com.

Monisha Ravisetti
Monisha Ravisetti
Astronomy Channel Editor
Monisha Ravisetti is Space.com's Astronomy Editor. She covers black
holes, star explosions, gravitational waves, exoplanet discoveries and
other enigmas hidden across the fabric of space and time. Previously,
she was a science writer at CNET, and before that, reported for The
Academic Times. Prior to becoming a writer, she was an immunology
researcher at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She graduated
from New York University in 2018 with a B.A. in philosophy, physics and chemistry. She spends too much time playing online chess. Her favorite
planet is Earth.




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