With six new discoveries, NASA crosses milestone of finding 5,500 exoplanets

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has discovered six new planets outside our solar system, crossing the milestone of finding 5,500 exoplanets.

Scientists at the US space agency have discovered six new exoplanets — HD 36384 b, TOI-198 b, TOI-2095 b, TOI-2095 c, TOI-4860 b, and MWC 758 c. All of them are outside the Solar System.

The total number of confirmed planets beyond our solar system now stands at 5,502. Around 31 years ago, in 1992, scientists first confirmed the existence of exoplanets when they detected twin planets, Poltergeist and Phobetor, orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12.

By March 2022, the number of discovered exoplanets surpassed the 5,000 mark. This new milestone marks a significant step towards understanding our universe better.

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched in 2018 has identified thousands of exoplanet candidates and confirmed over 320 planets.

Many characteristics of these newly discovered exoplanets have been observed. For instance, HD 36384 b, a super Jupiter, orbits an enormous M giant star nearly 40 times the size of our Sun.

TOI-2095 b and TOI-2095 c are hot super-Earths orbiting the same M dwarf star, while TOI-4860 b is a rare "hot Jupiter" completing an orbit every 1.52 days around an M dwarf star. Meanwhile, TOI-198 b, a potentially rocky planet, resides on the inner edge of its star's habitable zone.

These discoveries were made using various detection methods, including the radial velocity technique, which measures stellar wobble caused by orbiting planets, and the transit method, which detects the dimming of starlight as planets pass in front of their host stars. Direct imaging was used to identify MWC 758 c.

The research in the field of exoplanets has witnessed exponential growth since the first confirmation in 1992. Space telescopes like Spitzer, Hubble, and the James Webb Space Telescope have made significant contributions to the exoplanet study.

In future, NASA is set to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in May 2027, which will be carrying a technology demonstration called the Roman Coronagraph Instrument.

The technology will work by using a series of complex masks and mirrors to distort the light coming from far-away stars. By distorting this starlight, the instrument will reveal and directly image hidden exoplanets, NASA said.

This could pave the way for future missions like the proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory, aimed to search for signs of life on planets outside our solar system.