NASA is poised to launch a $337 million washing machine-sized spacecraft that aims to vastly expand mankind’s search for planets beyond our solar system, particularly closer, Earth-sized ones that might harbor life, reported AFP. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, is scheduled to launch Monday at 6:32 pm (2232 GMT) atop a SpaceX Falcon…

PARIS: In its early life, Earth suffered a meteorite pummelling that lasted 100 million years and may have changed its chemical makeup forever, researchers said Wednesday. The steady stream of Earth-shattering collisions shortly after the birth of our solar system, ripped up the planet’s surface and altered the very composition of the rock we call…

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: Scientists added a record 715 more planets to the list of known worlds beyond the solar system, boosting the overall tally to nearly 1,700, astronomers have said. The additions include four planets about 2-1/2 times as big as Earth that are the right distance from their parent stars for liquid surface water,…

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: A neighbour star has at least six planets in orbit, including three circling at the right distance for water to exist, a condition believed to be necessary for life, scientists have said.Previously, the star known as Gliese 667C was found to be hosting three planets, one of which was located in its…

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: Scientists using NASA's Kepler space telescope have found the best candidates yet for habitable worlds beyond the solar system, including a pair of potentially life-friendly planets orbiting the same star, officials said on Thursday.The planets join a list of about 700 confirmed extra-solar planets discovered since 1995.The new additions include a pair…

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: Scientists using NASA's Kepler space telescope have found the best candidates yet for habitable worlds beyond the solar system, including a pair of potentially life-friendly planets orbiting the same star, officials said on Thursday.The planets join a list of about 700 confirmed extra-solar planets discovered since 1995.The new additions include a pair…

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: Astronomers have found a pair of Earth-sized planets orbiting a star similar to the sun, though neither are believed to be suitable for life, scientists on NASA's Kepler telescope team said on Tuesday.The discovery follows confirmation earlier this month of a super-Earth sized planet, called Kepler-22b, that circles the right distance from…

WASHINGTON: Some planets are just flipping backward. Of the more than 500 planets detected around stars besides our Sun, the vast majority appear to spin the same way the star does, scientists reported on Wednesday in the journal Nature. But some of these extrasolar planets spin in the opposite direction of the stars they orbit,…

WASHINGTON: An orbiting NASA telescope is finding whole new worlds of possibilities in the search for alien life, including more than 50 potential planets that appear to be in the habitable zone.On Wednesday at a news conference at NASA headquarters in Washington, new data from the ongoing Kepler telescope mission was released.In just a year…

WASHINGTON: European astronomers announced they had found 32 new planets orbiting stars outside our solar system and said on Monday they believe their find means that 40 percent or more of Sun-like stars have such planets. The planets range in size from about five times the size of Earth to about five times the size…