Last week, we shared a story about how several Kepler exoplanets had been re-analyzed and determined to be actually small stars and how that would set the quest for 5,000 confirmed exoplanets back just a little. Apparently, it set it back very little, because we are excited to note that yesterday, March 21, NASA announced that they surpassed that milestone with the addition of another 65 confirmations. Congratulations to everyone who has ever analyzed exoplanetary data and worked toward this goal.

Of those 5,000 planets, about 30% are gas giants, 35% are like Neptune, 31% are super-Earths, and the remaining 4% are terrestrial. That last number is expected to increase as our observing power increases, and we get more visibility into smaller and smaller worlds. Earth 2.0 is out there, and we’re going to find it sooner rather than later.

We’re going to include some fun links in our show notes for this story, including a data sonification video of all 5,000 plus exoplanets, so head over to DailySpace.org and check it out.

More Information

NASA press release