NASA's Kepler telescope finds five new planets

NASA's Kepler telescope finds five new planets

WASHINGTON – NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered five new planets beyond the solar system, the U.S. space agency has said, just 10 months after Kepler launched into space to find Earth-like planets.

The discovery of the five planets "contributes to our understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve from the gas and dust disks that give rise to both the stars and their planets," NASA's William Borucki, principal science investigator for the Kepler mission, said in a statement on Monday.

But all five exoplanets are "too hot for life as we know it," NASA said.

The newly discovered planets are known as "hot Jupiters" because of their large masses and extreme temperatures, which range from 2,200 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,204 - 1649 degrees Celsius) -- hotter than molten lava.

Their orbits last between three and five days, meaning they follow paths close to their stars, which are hotter and larger than the Earth's sun, NASA said.

The smallest of the newly discovered planets is roughly the size of Neptune, the fourth largest planet in Earth's solar system, and the biggest is around the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.

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