The Azerbaijan State News Agency

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

NASA discovers smallest planet outside our solar system

11.01.2011 [12:20]
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Baku, January 11 (AZERTAC). NASA has discovered the smallest planet ever seen beyond our solar system - a rocky world just 1.4 times larger than Earth - using its planet-hunting Kepler observatory. The planet, called Kepler-10b, is also the first rocky alien planet to be confirmed by NASA`s Kepler mission using data collected between May 2009 and early January 2010. But, while Kepler-10b is a rocky world, it is not located in the so-called habitable zone - a region in a planetary system where liquid water can potentially exist on the planet`s surface.

"Kepler-10b is the smallest exoplanet discovered to date, and the first unquestionably rocky planet orbiting a star outside our solar system," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler`s deputy science team leader at NASA`s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., at a press conference here at the 217th American Astronomy Society meeting.