It's great to see NASA has put the Kepler spacecraft back in action after a
hiatus and some retooling. Under its second phase, called the K2 mission, Kepler has already detected a new exoplanet.
According to NASA, the planet was discovered during a test run of the K2 mission earlier this year:
The newly confirmed planet, HIP 116454b, is 2.5 times the diameter of
Earth and follows a close, nine-day orbit around a star that is smaller
and cooler than our sun, making the planet too hot for life as we know
it. HIP 116454b and its star are 180 light-years from Earth, toward the
constellation Pisces.
While this may not be a livable planet for our purposes, it shows Kepler is back at work and helping us to expand our knowledge of other planetary systems. With the costs of new spacecraft and related missions running ever higher, it is nice to know that recycling existing spacecraft can help us to do great science in the meantime.
