Latest News About Alien Planets

NASA scientists cooked up an alien atmosphere in their lab to solve the puzzle of "hot Jupiters."

Many alien planets around stars like our sun are potentially extraordinarily tilted, leading to dramatic swings between extreme winters and summers, a new study finds.

NASA's recently deceased Kepler space telescope launched on March 6, 2009, ushering in a new era of planetary science.

The find is a fitting tribute to Kepler, which has discovered nearly 70 percent of all known exoplanets.

Crashing a giant space rock into a young planet can strip off some or all of its atmosphere, creating a wealth of different types of worlds.

Astronomy may focus on the stars, but occasionally something happens to bring it back down to Earth — like a swarm of insects shorting out their telescope.

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a 'sub-Neptune' planet orbiting the star HD 21749, which lies about 53 light-years from Earth.

Oxygen may not be quite as compelling a sign of alien life as astrobiologists had thought, a new study suggests.

A gaseous alien world is evaporating at a record rate, shedding considerable light on an exoplanet mystery, a new study reports.

One of seven planets orbiting a small star, TRAPPIST-1, may be capable of supporting life as we know it on Earth, new climate models suggest.

NASA decommissioned the Kepler space telescope last night (Nov. 15), beaming "goodnight" commands to the sun-orbiting observatory.

Astronomers have found compelling evidence of a frigid alien world about 3.2 times more massive than Earth circling Barnard's Star, a dim red dwarf that lies just 6 light-years from the sun.