page_title: Kepler space telescope
section_title: 2014
hierarchical_section_title: Kepler space telescope / Mission results / 2014
caption_attribution_description: English: EXOPLANET DISCOVERIES - HISTOGRAM - February 26, 2014 http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/digital-press-kit-kepler-planet-bonanza The histogram shows the number of planet discoveries by year for roughly the past two decades of the exoplanet search. The blue bar shows previous planet discoveries, the red bar shows previous Kepler planet discoveries, the gold bar displays the 715 new planets verified by multiplicity.
context_page_description: The Kepler space telescope is a retired space telescope launched by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched on March 7, 2009, into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. The principal investigator was William J. Borucki. After nine years of operation, the telescope's reaction control system fuel was depleted, and NASA announced its retirement on October 30, 2018.
  Designed to survey a portion of Earth's region of the Milky Way to discover Earth-size exoplanets in or near habitable zones and estimate how many of the billions of stars in the Milky Way have such planets, Kepler's sole scientific instrument is a photometer that continually monitored the brightness of approximately 150,000 main sequence stars in a fixed field of view. These data are transmitted to Earth, then analyzed to detect periodic dimming caused by exoplanets that cross in front of their host star. Only planets whose orbits are seen edge-on from Earth can be detected. During its over nine and a half years of service, Kepler observed 530,506 stars and detected 2,662 planets.
context_section_description: On February 13, over 530 additional planet candidates were announced residing around single planet systems. Several of them were nearly Earth-sized and located in the habitable zone. This number was further increased by about 400 in June 2014.
  On February 26, scientists announced that data from Kepler had confirmed the existence of 715 new exoplanets. A new statistical method of confirmation was used called "verification by multiplicity" which is based on how many planets around multiple stars were found to be real planets. This allowed much quicker confirmation of numerous candidates which are part of multiplanetary systems. 95% of the discovered exoplanets were smaller than Neptune and four, including Kepler-296f, were less than 2 1/2 the size of Earth and were in habitable zones where surface temperatures are suitable for liquid water.
  In March, a study found that small planets with orbital periods of less than one day are usually accompanied by at least one additional planet with orbital period of 1–50 days. This study also noted that ultra-short period planets are almost always smaller than 2 Earth radii unless it is a misaligned hot Jupiter.
  On April 17, the Kepler team announced the discovery of Kepler-186f, the first nearly Earth-sized planet located in the habitable zone. This planet orbits around a red dwarf.
  In May 2014, K2 observations fields 0 to 13 were announced and described in detail. K2 observations began in June 2014.
  In July 2014, the first discoveries from K2 field data were reported in the form of eclipsing binaries. Discoveries were derived from a Kepler engineering data set which was collected prior to campaign 0 in preparation to the main K2 mission.
  On September 23, 2014, NASA reported that the K2 mission had completed campaign 1, the first official set of science observations, and that campaign 2 was underway.
  Campaign 3 lasted from November 14, 2014 to February 6, 2015 and included "16,375 standard long cadence and 55 standard short cadence targets".
caption: Histogram of exoplanet discoveries. The yellow shaded bar shows newly announced planets including those verified by the multiplicity technique (February 26, 2014).
exif: {}