Last week, NASA announced a new milestone for astronomy: more than 5000 exoplanets have been cataloged and confirmed in the past 30 years.
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NASA’s Habitable Exoplanets Catalog keeps tabs on which worlds may have the potential to host life.
This super-Earth has a radius 2.4 times that of our home planet, and orbits in the habitable zone of its host star. It could be covered in a vast ocean, though scientists are still unsure about its makeup.
This planet is just one of several in the TRAPPIST-1 system that could potentially host life. TRAPPIST-1e is about the same size as our planet, and orbits in the habitable zone of a dwarf star, 40 light years from Earth.
Just 4.2 light years from Earth, this world is about the same size as our home planet. It also orbits the closest star to Earth, making it far and away the closest exoplanet.
This planet is also close to Earth at just 11 light years away. It is the closest planet orbiting a red dwarf star, and is likely to be a terrestrial world like our home planet.
This world orbits one of the smallest stars we know of. But since it is the innermost planet in that system, researchers think it could be warm enough to be habitable.
This potentially rocky planet is 100 light years away, slightly larger that Earth, and orbits a star 40 percent the mass of our Sun.
Though this planet is roughly 40 percent larger than Earth, researchers estimate that is has a rocky composition like our home planet, and resides in a habitable zone.