NASA Forms Group Dedicated to Finding Alien Life

NASA has announced an unprecedented effort to try and discover life in the far reaches of space outside of our own solar system.

NASA announced that they will create a group known as the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, which will be known by the acronym of "NExSS". The purpose of the group will be to reach a better understanding of exoplanets and how stars and planets could interact to create the conditions that would make life possible.

"This interdisciplinary endeavor connects top research teams and provides a synthesized approach in the search for planets with the greatest potential for signs of life," says Jim Green, NASA's Director of Planetary Science. "The hunt for exoplanets is not only a priority for astronomers, it's of keen interest to planetary and climate scientists as well."

The first exoplanet was discovered in 1995, meaning that the knowledge humanity has about the phenomenon is limited. The addition of the Kepler telescope to NASA's arsenal of tools in 2009 has helped increase what we know about exoplanets. The telescope orbits the Earth and since it became operation it has helped scientists discover more than 1,000 exoplanets.

Scientists have currently found thousands of other possible exoplanets and are currently trying to develop ways to determine if a planet has life, or could sustain it.

NExSS will bring together Earth scientists, planetary scientists, scientists who focus on the sun, and astrophysicists.

Dr. Paul Hertz, Director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA notes, "NExSS scientists will not only apply a systems science approach to existing exoplanet data, their work will provide a foundation for interpreting observations of exoplanets from future exoplanet missions."

Those new missions include the launching of new satellites and telescopes to aid in this quest such as the Transiting Exoplanet Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.