NASA Press Conference Live Stream: Exoplanet Discovery Announcement Expected

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will hold a conference at 1 p.m. EST Wednesday to make an announcement about exoplanets, which are planets that orbit a star other than our Sun.

Update, 1:20 p.m.: NASA announces it discovered seven Earth-size planets, three of which might have water. The seven planets are 40 light years away, or 235 trillion miles.

The first exoplanet was discovered in 1995 by European scientists who noticed that a planet was wobbling, indicating it was probably in a gravitational pull. They measured the radial velocity or the wavelengths of starlight as they were changing from being pulled and stretched in orbit to confirm their suspicions. Since then scientists have been using this method to identify more exoplanets with sophisticated telescopes that can show clearer images of planets, and help scientists find planets that resemble Earth.

It is unclear what NASA will present on exoplanets today in the press conference, but the findings will be released by the journal Nature at 1 p.m. Wednesday and there will be a Reddit ask me anything session following the conference at 3 p.m.

The conference is happening at NASA’s headquarters in Washington but will be available to stream on NASA’s website as well as on C-SPAN.