Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado, developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. NASAвЂ™s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. And thatвЂ™s a step closer to finding a habitable environment beyond the solar system.ДЄmes is responsible for the Kepler mission concept, ground system development, mission operations, and science data analysis. The results hint that a large fraction of planets smaller than 1.5 times the radius of Earth may be comprised of the silicates, iron, nickel and magnesium that are found in the terrestrial planets here in the solar system.ДЄrmed with this type of information, scientists will be able to turn the fraction of stars harboring Earth-sizes planets into the fraction of stars harboring bona-fide rocky planets. The dynamical mass measurements produced by Doppler and TTV analyses will help to answer these questions. вЂњBut the question in the back of our minds is: are all planets the size of Earth rocky? Might some be scaled-down versions of icy Neptunes or steamy water worlds? What fraction are recognizable as kin of our rocky, terrestrial globe?вЂќ Of particular interest to the search for life is the prevalence of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone,вЂќ said Natalie Batalha, Kepler mission scientist at NASAвЂ™s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. вЂњKeplerвЂ™s primary objective is to determine the prevalence of planets of varying sizes and orbits. The result also was published in the Astrophysical Journal in December 2013. Xie measured masses of the 30 planets thereby adding to the compendium of planetary characteristics for this new class of planets. Ji-Wei Xie of the University of Toronto, used TTV to validate 15 pairs of Kepler planets ranging from Earth-sized to a little larger than Neptune. Much like the gravitational force of a planet on its star, neighboring planets can tug on one another causing one planet to accelerate and another planet to decelerate along its orbit.

The paper detailing the research will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.ДЄ complementary technique used to determine mass, and in turn density of a planet, is by measuring the transit timing variations (TTV). The ground-based observation research validates 38 new planets, six of which are non-transiting planets only seen in the Doppler data. The density measurements suggest that the planets smaller than Neptune вЂ“ or mini-Neptunes вЂ“ have a rocky core but the proportions of hydrogen, helium and hydrogen-rich molecules in the envelope surrounding that core vary dramatically, with some having no envelope at all. These density measurements dictate the possible chemical composition of these strange, but ubiquitous planets. With the mass and diameter in-hand, scientists could immediately determine the density of the planets, characterizing them as rocky or gaseous, or mixtures of the two. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, scientists confirmed 41 of the exoplanets discovered by Kepler and determined the masses of 16.

Using one of the worldвЂ™s largest ground-based telescopes at the W. вЂњWe now face daunting questions about how these enigmas formed and why our solar system is devoid of the most populous residents in the galaxy.вЂќ вЂњThis marvelous avalanche of information about the mini-Neptune planets is telling us about their core-envelope structure, not unlike a peach with its pit and fruit,вЂќ said Geoff Marcy, professor of astronomy at University of California, Berkeley who led the summary analysis of the high-precision Doppler study. That measured wobble reveals the mass of the planet: the higher the mass of the planet, the greater the gravitational tug on the star and hence the greater the wobble. The team measured the reflex wobble of the host star, caused by the gravitational tug on the star exerted by the orbiting planet. The planets orbit their host stars in less than five and three days respectively, making these worlds too hot for life as we know it.ДЄ major component of these follow-up observations were Doppler measurements of the planetsвЂ™ host stars.

Two of the new rocky worlds, dubbed Kepler-99b and Kepler-406b, are both forty percent larger in size than Earth and have a density similar to lead. Included in the findings are five new rocky planets ranging in size from ten to eighty percent larger than Earth.

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