NASA is continuously observing space for different reasons. It has also sent its missions to Mars and other planets. The objective behind all these missions and observations is to find a habitable planet like the Earth. It launched the Kepler telescope in 2009 to study space. The studies revolved around finding an Earth-like planet. They have added about 219 new planets to the list. All these are revolving around their parent stars. The scientists have gathered data from the study of about 200,000 sample stars through this telescope.
“Are we alone?” was the question in the mind of every Astronomer. Now, they have come up with the answer that we are not alone. They have found 10 Earth-like planets. All these are rocky and have an Earth-like atmosphere. This is because these are at right distances from their parent stars. During the 4 years of its mission, Kepler has studied about 4034 space bodies. Of these 2335 are confirmed as planets and other 1699 are candidates of the same class.
Including all these planets discovered by Kepler telescope, the scientists have confirmed that there exit about 3500 planets in space. The number is beyond our Solar system. They have found 50 worlds out of which 10 worlds are of the same size like Earth. This telescope has helped the scientists to study the surface of these planets. It has revealed whether the planets have solid or gaseous surface. The data provided by this telescope tells that the planets with size 1.75 times of Earth-size are rocky and have solid surfaces. While, the planets with size 3.5 times of the size of the Earth are gaseous.
Scientists are still studying the observations to reach the conclusion that life can exist in space on other Earth-like planets. From 2009 to 2013, the telescope has studied about .025 percent of the sky. Still, a lot of studies about these planets are needed before labeling them Earth-like.
The main difference between the atmospheres of these planets is the quantity of Hydrogen and Helium gases. The study of details about these planets is also not easy as there are no such planets in our Solar system. The scientists are trying to spot out the factors that changed the surfaces of these planets.
