NASA prompts speculation by scheduling press conference related to Kepler mission

NASA has scheduled a press conference with scientists expected to make an announcement about the agency’s search for Earth-like planets beyond our solar system.

NASA has called for media teleconference to announce some news.

ALIEN hunters and conspiracy theorists alike are salivating at what NASA might be about to reveal to the world after the space agency announced a press teleconference to take place early tomorrow morning.

The conference will be held to make public the latest discoveries made by NASA’s planet hunting Kepler space telescope. The spacecraft was first launched in 2009 and is tasked with searching for habitable Earth-like planets outside our solar system.

Kepler’s second mission has been a resounding success for scientists since launching in 2014 and has been responsible for the discovery of nearly 5000 potential exoplanets — a planet that orbits a star other than the Sun.

Thanks to the Kepler spacecraft, NASA had been able to accrue data from a vast expanse of alien worlds. They now believe there may be at least one planet orbiting every single star.

Tomorrow’s teleconference (3am AEST) will be streamed live and space enthusiasts can participate by sending in questions via Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA.

Last week a group of NASA scientists, who worked on fixing the Kepler spacecraft following a dramatic systems failure in April, answered the public’s questions during a reddit AMA. There was no hint of any Earth shattering news to come but unsurprisingly the announcement of tomorrow’s press conference has sparked spirited speculation among the more imaginative stargazers among us.

“Tomorrow could go down in the history books as the day alien life was confirmed,” wrote Tech Radar. Meanwhile others have taken to social media to ponder what NASA is about to tell us.

The Kepler spacecraft. (Photo: NASA//Wendy Stenzel)

Kepler has found plenty of what it believes to be planets, question is how Earth-like are they?

WHAT COULD NASA ANNOUNCE?

The announcement is unlikely to have anything to do with alien life forms, but NASA doesn’t usually hold a press conference about its scientific findings unless it’s kind of a big deal.

The scientists who are holding the conference also suggests a significant bit of news. Among those that will be in attendance include Paul Hertz, the director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters and Charlie Sobeck, a Kepler mission manager.

One of the plausible things the US space agency could announce tomorrow is the discovery of an exoplanet believed to be capable of hosting life, either now or in the past. Given that is one of the main objectives of the Kepler mission, it makes sense that scientists would be excited about any data that could point to an exoplanet with potentially favourable conditions for supporting life.

There is also the possibility, however remote, that the announcement could have something to do with the hypothetical existence of an alien megastructure that some have proclaimed to be hiding in the far reaches of the galaxy. The sensational claim was made last October after a group of citizen researchers studied data from the Kepler telescope and noticed the bizarre light pattern of a star called KIC 8462852, suggesting it was being circled in tight formation by a large piece of matter. However the claim has become decidedly more suspect following a recent study in the Astrophysical Journal which cast doubt over the researcher’s conclusions.

The Kepler mission also studies phenomena such as black holes and supernovas, and thus tomorrow’s announcement could be about something entirely unexpected. At this point, we’ll just have to wait and see.