Plethora of planets found with potential for life

Kepler spacecraft sends back bounty from beyond

In a grand finale of planetspotting prowess, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft tracked down 219 new planets outside our solar system — including 10 that could have the right qualifications for hosting life, scientists announced Monday.

The 219 planets are technically planet “candidates,” meaning they await rigorous confirmation, and some may turn out to be false leads. Even so, Kepler is unlikely to lose its crown as the top planet- spotting machine devised. All told, the spacecraft has notched 2,335 confirmed planets orbiting a star other than the sun — more than 80% of the total found by all the world’s observatories combined.

Kepler’s latest finds are in a region of the galaxy hundreds of thousands of light years away, in between the bright stars Deneb and Vega.

Kepler’s star is setting fast. The high- precision craft suffered a mechanical failure in 2013 that forced an end to its planet- finding campaign. Though it continues to churn out data, Monday’s announcement was the last time scientists expect to announce a new cache of Kepler planet candidates.

“Yeah, it feels a bit like the end of an era, but actually, I see it as a new beginning,” Susan Thompson of the SETI Institute said at a NASA briefing. “It’s amazing the things Kepler has found. … I’m really excited to see what people are going to do with this catalog.”

NASA/ JPL- CALTECH VIA AP NASA’s Kepler space telescope identified 10 planets that are near- Earth size and in the habitable zones of their stars.