Beyond the Norms

NASA‘s Kepler mission discovered the smallest planet outside the Solar System and named it “Kepler-10b“. Kepler-10b measures 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the first first rocky and smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.

“All of Kepler’s best capabilities have converged to yield the first solid evidence of a rocky planet orbiting a star other than our sun,” said Natalie Batalha, Kepler’s deputy science team lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and primary author of a paper on the discovery accepted by the Astrophysical Journal. “The Kepler team made a commitment in 2010 about finding the telltale signatures of small planets in the data, and it’s beginning to pay off.”

The discovery of this so-called exoplanet is based on more than eight months of data collected by the spacecraft from May 2009 to early January 2010. Below is the video is narrated by Kepler Deputy Science Team Lead Natalie Batalha.

Quick Facts about Kepler-10b:

• 560 light years from the Earth
• 8 billion years old
• Surface gravity in the smallest planet outside the solar system is twice that of the Earth
• orbiting a star other than the sun which made scientists classify it as an exoplanet

For more information, you can check the links below about Kepler-10b: Smallest Planet outside the Solar System:

• NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet
• NASA’S Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet

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