Today is the five year anniversary of the announcement of Kepler's first habitable-zone exoplanet discovery!

Half a decade has passed since NASA’s Kepler Mission confirmed its first planet in a habitable zone outside of our solar system and at once sent millions of imaginations on personal journeys to infinity and beyond. To date, the mission has confirmed 21 exoplanets that are both less than twice the size of Earth and in the habitable zone (out of a total 2,331 exoplanets discovered) and has a further 2,365 candidates still awaiting confirmation.

We stand here now on the eve of the implementation of the James Webb Space Telescope (relative eve, I should point out, as the JWST is slated to launch in October 2018) and one can only imagine what untold secrets of our universe it might one day reveal to us.

Thanks, NASA, for the memories of our past and the discoveries of our future.

Submitted December 07, 2016 at 11:21AM by SchrodingersCatPics http://ift.tt/2gUmRxh