How NASA's Planet Hunting Telescope Has Changed Astronomy (and Us) Forever

Ten years ago we thought our solar system was special. today, we know that it is not the same. This revolution is due to the work of NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which has officially reached the end of its mission.

Since Kepler's launch in 2009, scientists have spotted a total of 2,681 confirmed planets orbiting other suns among the data collected by the instrument. 288 other potential Kepler planets are still being examined by scientists.

Bill Borucki, who first envisioned Kepler's mission and was the main investigator until his retirement from NASA in 2015, knows many of these thousands of planets as individuals. Take, for example, Kepler-22b, which he calls one of the most interesting planets in the lot. [Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]

"It's a planet between the size of the Earth and Neptune, unlike any planet in our solar system, it's a planet that could very well be an aquatic world, a world covered by a planet." ocean and located in the habitable zone, "Borucki said. said at a press conference held yesterday (October 30) to mark the end of Kepler's work in the space. "There could very well be an atmosphere on a water planet that could lead to life, so it's an extremely interesting planet.It's one of my favorite ones."

But he is not only enthused by the individual worlds: the Kepler mission has also identified many solar systems, where it spotted several planets orbiting a star. He is excited by what we will one day know about the Kepler-444 system in particular, he said.

"These are small rocky planets, and they were formed around a star that is about six and a half billion years older than our star, than our own planetary system," Borucki said. "If life had developed more than six and a half billion years ago before the Earth was formed, it might be very interesting for us to discover some very interesting life forms in search of these first planets. "

But if Borucki is fascinated by planets that could potentially harbor life, he is also struck by the diversity of more than 600 solar systems studied by Kepler. Take, for example, the existence of hot Jupiter – gas giants so close to their stars that they spin into orbit in a few days unlike our own Jupiter wandering around the sun for nearly 12 terrestrial years.

Such discoveries have forced scientists to no longer assume that our solar system resembled those around us, "said Padi Boyd, project scientist for the successor mission to Kepler, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

"Kepler has somehow overcome that expectation," Boyd said during the press conference. "Putting our own solar system in this broader context, I think is a really interesting portrait of the galaxy – our solar system is not typical.Maybe that no solar system is typical perhaps they are all very different. "

This wealth of solar systems has also warmed the hearts of science fiction fans participating in the mission. For Charlie Sobeck, Kepler's system engineer for NASA Ames, the mission transformed the type of universe he grew up with while watching "Star Trek" in real life. "I had no trouble believing that there were planets of all kinds, so I wondered why that had so affected me when Kepler showed that there was Meme it many planets all over the world? " he said at the press conference.

"There is just a big difference between believing and knowing," Sobeck said. "It hit me like a hammer in the chest when Kepler showed us that there really, really, are different planets."

Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her. @meghanbartels. follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook. Original article on Space.com.