A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was a breathtaking diversity of planets. From the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, rebel ships and Imperial cruisers, we've seen a colorful variety of them come into view. Harsh deserts baked by twin suns, craggy caverns, lush forests, water worlds, mineral-coated surfaces, inhospitable ice, inhabited moons and even lava worlds have greeted our gaze.
Welcome to the sinister side of space, where "no one can hear you scream," as the original "Alien" movie poster warned.
Astronomers have unexpectedly discovered a gas giant Jupiter-esque exoplanet that's orbiting a dwarf star, located about 30 light-years from our sun.
For the first time, astronomers have peered into the atmosphere of an exoplanet -- a planet outside our solar system -- and discovered both water vapor and temperatures that could potentially support life, according to a new study.
Earth seems like the perfect hub for life because it's the only planet known so far to host it -- but new research suggests that other planets could have oceans that are even more hospitable, offering life that is more varied than we know it.
After completing its first year of observations in the southern sky, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has spotted some intriguing new exoplanets only 31 light-years away from Earth.
Astronomers have photographed two juvenile exoplanets that are still growing as they orbit a young star 370 light-years from Earth. This is only the second system with more than one planet to be captured in an image.
NASA's planet-hunting TESS mission has found its first Earth-size exoplanet in a star system only 53 light-years from Earth. Another exoplanet, a warm mini-Neptune, was found in the same system.
NASA's planet-hunting TESS mission has only been surveying the sky since July, but it's already making incredible discoveries.
NASA's new planet-hunting TESS telescope has found an exoplanet three times the size of Earth only 53 light-years away. It has also discovered a super-Earth and a rocky world, making three exoplanet discoveries in the first three months since it began surveying the sky in July.
Although NASA's Kepler space telescope ran out of fuel and ended its mission in 2018, citizen scientists have used its data to discover an exoplanet 226 light-years away in the Taurus constellation.
A newly discovered exoplanet 124 light-years away is just full of hot air, according to a new study.
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has run out of fuel, and its mission has come to an end 94 million miles from Earth, the agency announced Tuesday. The deep space mission's end is not unexpected, as low fuel levels had been noted in July.
TESS, NASA's planet-hunting satellite, launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 6:51 p.m. ET Wednesday. It had a 30-second launch window. The launch was originally scheduled for Monday, but rescheduled to conduct additional Guidance Navigation and Control analysis, the agency said.
The launch of NASA's planet-hunting satellite TESS has been postponed until Wednesday. The satellite had been scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Monday evening.
The NASA Kepler mission has discovered 219 more exoplanets, including 10 Earth-size planets, program scientist Mario Perez said Monday at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.
