NASA to reveal major breakthroughs from its alien-hunting programme

New Delhi : NASA will be revealing major breakthroughs from its alien-hunting programme that could give potential clues about the alien life.

As per details released by NASA for the event, the news will focus on a discovery made using artificial intelligence from Google.

The scientists used Kepler space telescope to study planets outside our solar system, also known as exoplanets.

It is believed that during the research, scientists found nearly 21 Earth-sized planets known to orbit within the habitable zones of their stars. 

The teleconference will be streamed on Thursday, December 14 at 1pm.

The briefing will be done by the scientists associated with the project. Among them are Paul Hertz, NASA astrophysicist, Christopher Shallue, Google AI senior software engineer, Andrew Vanderburg, astronomer and NASA Sagan Fellow, and Jessie Dotson, Kepler project scientist.

NASA said in a release it will announce "the latest discovery made by its planet-hunting Kepler space telescope".

The Kepler Mission was launched in 2009 to study how many planets exist beyond our solar system.

Researchers made the latest breakthrough with the help of artificial intelligence technology, which was used to analyse the data sent down from the telescope.

NASA added: "The discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google. 

"Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence, and demonstrates new ways of analysing Kepler data."

Kepler completed its main mission in 2012, but continued to collect data in an extended mission.

In 2014, the spacecraft began a new mission called K2, which continues the search for exoplanets while studying other cosmic phenomena.