The Science Mic

Original air date: Feb. 22, 2017 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET, 1800 UTC) NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water. The discovery sets a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system. All of these seven planets could have liquid water — key to life as we know it — under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone. The briefing participants were: Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington Michael Gillon, astronomer at the University of Liege in Belgium Sean Carey, manager of NASA’s Spitzer Science Center at Caltech/IPAC, Pasadena, California Nikole Lewis, astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore Sara Seager, professor of planetary science and physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge For more information on exoplanets, visit: http://exoplanets.nasa.gov