Breaking News: Mystery as NASA Hosts Media Teleconference to Announce 'Major' Discovery (+Video)

NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST Thursday, Dec. 14, to announce the latest discovery made by its planet-hunting Kepler space telescope. The discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence, and demonstrates new ways of analyzing Kepler data.

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has gazed at more than 150,000 stars and continues to transmit back data that leads to important discoveries of celestial objects in our galaxy, including first-time observations of planets outside our solar system.

When Kepler launched in March 2009, scientists didn’t know how common planets were beyond our solar system. Thanks to Kepler’s treasure trove of discoveries, astronomers now believe there may be at least one planet orbiting every star in the sky.

Kepler completed its prime mission in 2012 and went on to collect data for an additional year in an extended mission. In 2014, the spacecraft began a new extended mission called K2, which continues the search for planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, while introducing new research opportunities to study young stars, supernovae and other cosmic phenomena.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-hosts-media-teleconference-to-announce-latest-kepler-discovery

Teleconference audio and visuals will stream live at:
https://www.nasa.gov/live

For more information about NASA’s Kepler mission, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/kepler

Clips, images credit: NASA/JPL