NASA and Google to announce new Kepler discovery

NASA and Google have called a conference to announce findings from the space agency’s planet-hunting Kepler telescope after embracing the use of AI.

NASA and Google are set to announce new findings from the US space agency’s planet-hunting Kepler telescope after unleashing the search giant’s AI technology on the data collected by the spacecraft.

The organisations have called a press conference, which will take place early on Friday morning (AEST), where they are expected to reveal the findings.

The Kepler telescope has been wandering the cosmos searching for Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars since it launched in March 2009.

The telescope’s sole scientific instrument is a photometer that continually monitors the brightness of over 145,000 main sequence stars in our Milky Way. The data is then transmitted to Earth and analysed to detect periodic dimming caused by exoplanets that cross in front of their host star.

That’s where Google steps in. Arguably the world leader in artificial intelligence, it has partnered with NASA in its quest to find habitable worlds — and apparently it has found something.

Details about what NASA has found are scarce but the agency said “the discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google,” adding the process “demonstrates new ways of analysing Kepler data”.

It’s not the first time NASA has announced an impending announcement when it has crunched new Kepler data and it’s likely the news will be along the lines of the discovery of more exoplanets that could have Earth-like qualities. Or perhaps NASA scientists will reveal how AI-powered data analysis could usher in a new era of exoplanet discovery.

In February NASA announced seven Earth-sized exoplanets around the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. While in June the space agency revealed the Kepler space telescope had identified 219 potential new exoplanet candidates, 10 of which could be habitable.

The NASA teleconference will take place at 5am Friday morning and can be watched online here.