NASA held a media briefing on 19 June 2017 to announce the Kepler Mission's completed catalog of 4,034 exoplanet discoveries.

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While there are a lot of questions to be answer about the 219 new exoplanets recently found by the Kepler Mission, at least 10 of these new exoplanets are Earth-sized and within the Goldilocks zone from their star, habitable zone that would permit liquid water on the surface.

Habitable Zone

The Habitable Zone is sometimes referred to the Goldilocks Zone because it is just right for supporting life as we know it. The Habitable Zone was first coined by Su-Shu Huang, a scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, in 1959.

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Gliese (GJ) 832c is an exoplanet a mere 16 light years from Earth that is on the outer edge of the Habital Zone.

Earth Similarity Index (ESI)

The Earth Similarity Index gives a indication of how "Earth-like" a planet can be. The ESI calculation yields a value between 0.0 and 1.0 where any value greater than 0.80 is considered to be Earth-like. The planetary parameters that go into the ESI calculation are mean radius, bulk density, surface temperature, and escape velocity. In the case of Gliese 832c its ESI is 0.81. But the ESI should not be used exclusively for finding a habitable planet because Venus has a ESI of 0.9.

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Our Galaxy is Teaming with Planets

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Our Milky Way galaxy is teaming with planets and the Kepler Mission has given scientists the ability do to statistics on the frequency of the different types of planets. If we look at our own solar system there are two basic types of planets, gas giants with thick gaseous atmospheres and rocky planets with thin atmospheres. The Kepler Mission has blown away our bi-modal concept of planetary types.

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Many Super Earth Planets

The Kepler Mission's catalog of planets identifies over 66% of the planets as "Super Earth" planets with radii between 1.1 and 4.0 times the radius of the Earth. Studies of the Kepler Mission catalog found that planets sizes around 1.3 Earths and 2.4 Earths are equally common in the catalog. While 1.5 and 2.0 Earth radii planets are much harder to find with the catalog.

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More to Come

The Kepler Space Telescope's second (K2) mission has begun at NASA and it has already identified 500 more exoplanets.

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Sources and Full Articles

Kepler Mission has released its catalogue of exoplanets, but what have we learnt about these worlds?, Scroll.in, 24 June 2017

No, that new exoplanet is not the best candidate to support life,The Conversation, 9 July 2014

NASA's K2 mission: The Kepler Space Telescope's Second Chance to Shine, NASA, 9 March 2016

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