NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST Thursday, Dec. 14, to announce the latest discovery made by its planet-hunting Kepler space telescope. The discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence, and demonstrates new ways of analyzing Kepler data.
Teleconference audio and visuals will stream live at:
The briefing participants are:
- Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington
- Christopher Shallue, senior software engineer at Google AI in Mountain View, California
- Andrew Vanderburg, astronomer and NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas, Austin
- Jessie Dotson, Kepler project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley
NASA will host a Reddit Ask Me Anything at 3 p.m. EST today on this discovery.
NASA Media Advisory
NASA Media Teleconference Audio File and Transcript
NASA Press Release
Short Video – Artificial Intelligence and NASA Data Used to Discover Eighth Planet Circling Distant Star
Figure 1
![An illustration of the different elements in NASA’s exoplanet program](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/fig1-exoplanets_1920x1080_2017_lw_most_recent.jpg?w=2048)
Figure 2
Figure 3
![Animated gif explaining how a computer can learn to identify a dog from a cat](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/fig3_cat_dog_neural_network.gif?w=1280)
Figure 4
Figure 5
![Kepler-90 system planet sizes, compared to planets in our solar system](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/fig5-stacked-90ss_planets-callouts.jpg?w=1152)
Kepler-90 System Planet Sizes
Figure 6
![Kepler-90 system planet orbits, compared to planetary orbits in our solar system](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/fig6-comparison-split-kepler-90_inner-ss.jpg?w=1152)
Kepler-90 Planets Orbit Close to Their Star
Figure 7
![Graphic showing the relatively small area of the Kepler-90 system that has been searched by Kepler](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/fig7-not-searched-90system-ss.jpg?w=1152)
Could Kepler-90 Have More Planets?
Figure 8
![This figure shows the number of systems with one, two, three, planets, etc.](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/fig8-planetary-systems-histo.jpg?w=1152)
Planetary Systems by Number of Known Planets
Figure 9
Figure 10
![Graph showing 3,567 current confirmed exoplanets](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/fig10-exoplanetdisc-dec14.jpg?w=1152)
Exoplanet Discoveries