Kepler spacecraft finds new Super-Earth 180 light years away
The new planet is 20,000 miles in diameter, about 2 1/2 times the size of Earth, and 12 times as massive, putting it into a category of planets called super-Earths that do not exist in our solar system.
A year and a half after an equipment failure threatened to derail its epochal search for worlds beyond our solar system, Nasa's Kepler spacecraft has bagged another planet, astronomers announced on Thursday.
The new planet is 20,000 miles in diameter, about 2 1/2 times the size of Earth, and 12 times as massive, putting it into a category of planets called super-Earths that do not exist in our solar system. It is unlivable, circling a star slightly smaller than the Sun about 180 light-years from here in the constellation Pisces, at the roasting distance of only 8.4 million miles, less than a tenth of the distance between us and our star.
Kepler was originally designed to stare at a patch of stars for four years and watch for blinks caused by planets passing in front of them. Early in 2013, however, one of the reaction wheels that keep the telescope pointed broke down. Engineers figured out a way to compensate using the pressure of sunlight on Kepler's solar panels to stabilize the spacecraft for smaller periods of time.
The new planet is 20,000 miles in diameter, about 2 1/2 times the size of Earth, and 12 times as massive, putting it into a category of planets called super-Earths that do not exist in our solar system. It is unlivable, circling a star slightly smaller than the Sun about 180 light-years from here in the constellation Pisces, at the roasting distance of only 8.4 million miles, less than a tenth of the distance between us and our star.
Kepler was originally designed to stare at a patch of stars for four years and watch for blinks caused by planets passing in front of them. Early in 2013, however, one of the reaction wheels that keep the telescope pointed broke down. Engineers figured out a way to compensate using the pressure of sunlight on Kepler's solar panels to stabilize the spacecraft for smaller periods of time.
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