NASA’s K2 Mission Discovers 104 New Worlds, 4 Can Host Alien Life

An international team of scientists have reportedly confirmed the existence of 104 worlds outside our solar system. The discovery was made possible with NASA's Kepler spacecraft which is on the K2 mission.

As per NASA, among the discoveries there is a planetary system that has four planets that seem habitable; however there are no absolute confirmations about it yet. Two of the exoplanets may also have radiation levels quite akin to our planet. The newly discovered exoplanets are around 20 to 50 percent bigger in diameter than the Earth. The planets orbit around the M dwarf star K2-72, which is located 181 light years away, near the Aquarius constellation. Incidentally, the parent star is much smaller and less bright than our sun. Scientists have also not ruled out the possibility of the newly discovered planets being capable of hosting extraterrestrial life, as per a NASA report.

In addition to the information gathered by the Kepler spacecraft, data and follow up observations achieved through earth based telescopes like University of Arizona's Large Binocular Telescope, University of California Observatories' Automated Planet Finder, Hawaii's W. M. Keck Observatory and North Gemini telescope also helped in confirming the roundup of planets.  The Kepler and the K2 mission both discover new worlds through the transit method, where the slight dip in the parent star's brightness shows that a planet is crossing it.

The K2 mission has the ability to observe a larger portion of smaller, cooler red dwarf kind of stars because it covers more area in the sky as compared to the Kepler mission. "An analogy would be to say that Kepler performed a demographic study, while the K2 mission focuses on the bright and nearby stars with different types of planets," said Ian Crossfield, study leader. "The K2 mission allows us to increase the number of small, red stars by a factor of 20, significantly increasing the number of astronomical 'movie stars' that make the best systems for further study".