Weekly Science & Technology Report

The Kepler Space Telescope (KST), NASA?s planet-hunting observatory, has discovered 26 confirmed planets within 11 new solar systems, including one with five planets all orbiting closer to their sun than Mercury circles ours, scientists told Reuters on Thursday. The confirmed planets range in size from 1.5 times the radius of Earth to larger than Jupiter. Fifteen of the planets are between Earth and Neptune size. However, it is not yet known which, if any, of these distant worlds are rocky like our own planet. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified Kepler planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that passes in front of it. These discoveries will help astronomers better understand how planets form. ?Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky,? said Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. ?Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discover