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By NASA
Explore This Section Exoplanets Home Exoplanets Overview Exoplanets Facts Types of Exoplanets Stars What is the Universe Search for Life The Big Questions Are We Alone? Can We Find Life? The Habitable Zone Why We Search Target Star Catalog Discoveries Discoveries Dashboard How We Find and Characterize Missions People Exoplanet Catalog Immersive The Exoplaneteers Exoplanet Travel Bureau 5 Ways to Find a Planet Strange New Worlds Universe of Monsters Galaxy of Horrors News Stories Blog Resources Get Involved Glossary Eyes on Exoplanets Exoplanet Watch More Multimedia ExEP This artist’s concept pictures the planets orbiting Barnard’s Star, as seen from close to the surface of one of them. Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld The Discovery
Four rocky planets much smaller than Earth orbit Barnard’s Star, the next closest to ours after the three-star Alpha Centauri system. Barnard’s is the nearest single star.
Key Facts
Barnard’s Star, six light-years away, is notorious among astronomers for a history of false planet detections. But with the help of high-precision technology, the latest discovery — a family of four — appears to be solidly confirmed. The tiny size of the planets is also remarkable: Capturing evidence of small worlds at great distance is a tall order, even using state-of-the-art instruments and observational techniques.
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Watching for wobbles in the light from a star is one of the leading methods for detecting exoplanets — planets orbiting other stars. This “radial velocity” technique tracks subtle shifts in the spectrum of starlight caused by the gravity of a planet pulling its star back and forth as the planet orbits. But tiny planets pose a major challenge: the smaller the planet, the smaller the pull. These four are each between about a fifth and a third as massive as Earth. Stars also are known to jitter and quake, creating background “noise” that potentially could swamp the comparatively quiet signals from smaller, orbiting worlds.
Astronomers measure the back-and-forth shifting of starlight in meters per second; in this case the radial velocity signals from all four planets amount to faint whispers — from 0.2 to 0.5 meters per second (a person walks at about 1 meter per second). But the noise from stellar activity is nearly 10 times larger at roughly 2 meters per second.
How to separate planet signals from stellar noise? The astronomers made detailed mathematical models of Barnard’s Star’s quakes and jitters, allowing them to recognize and remove those signals from the data collected from the star.
The new paper confirming the four tiny worlds — labeled b, c, d, and e — relies on data from MAROON-X, an “extreme precision” radial velocity instrument attached to the Gemini Telescope on the Maunakea mountaintop in Hawaii. It confirms the detection of the “b” planet, made with previous data from ESPRESSO, a radial velocity instrument attached to the Very Large Telescope in Chile. And the new work reveals three new sibling planets in the same system.
Fun Facts
These planets orbit their red-dwarf star much too closely to be habitable. The closest planet’s “year” lasts a little more than two days; for the farthest planet, it’s is just shy of seven days. That likely makes them too hot to support life. Yet their detection bodes well in the search for life beyond Earth. Scientists say small, rocky planets like ours are probably the best places to look for evidence of life as we know it. But so far they’ve been the most difficult to detect and characterize. High-precision radial velocity measurements, combined with more sharply focused techniques for extracting data, could open new windows into habitable, potentially life-bearing worlds.
Barnard’s star was discovered in 1916 by Edward Emerson Barnard, a pioneering astrophotographer.
The Discoverers
An international team of scientists led by Ritvik Basant of the University of Chicago published their paper on the discovery, “Four Sub-Earth Planets Orbiting Barnard’s Star from MAROON-X and ESPRESSO,” in the science journal, “The Astrophysical Journal Letters,” in March 2025. The planets were entered into the NASA Exoplanet Archive on March 13, 2025.
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This exoplanet encyclopedia — continuously updated, with more than 5,600 entries — combines interactive 3D models and detailed data on…
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By European Space Agency
Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captures the striking landscape surrounding the Waza National Park in Cameroon. View the full article
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By Space Force
The U.S. Space Force and ULA launch team successfully completed the certification process of the Vulcan rocket. The first NSSL mission on Vulcan is expected this summer.
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By NASA
On March 3, 1915, the United States Congress created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Although the NACA’s founding took place just over 11 years after the Wright Brothers’ first powered flightfirst powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Congress took the action in response to America lagging behind other world powers’ advances in aviation and aeronautics. From its modest beginnings as an advisory committee, over the years, the NACA established research centers and test facilities that enabled groundbreaking advances in civilian and military aviation, as well as the fledgling discipline of spaceflight. With the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1958, the new agency incorporated the NACA’s facilities, its employees, and its annual budget. The NACA provided NASA with a strong foundation as it set out to explore space.
The first meeting of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics on April 23, 1915.NASA The NACA executive committee in 1934. NASA The Congressional action that created the NACA, implemented as a rider to the 1915 Naval Appropriations Bill, reads in part, “…It shall be the duty of the advisory committee for aeronautics to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution. …”. In its initial years, the NACA fulfilled its intended role, coordinating activities already in place in the area of aeronautics research, reporting directly to the president. The committee, made up of 12 representatives from government agencies, academia, and the military, first met on April 23 in the Office of the Secretary of War in Washington, D.C. It established a nine-member executive committee to oversee day-to-day operations and spent the first few years establishing its headquarters in Washington.
The committee’s logo, approved in 1941.NASA The committee’s seal, approved by presidential executive order in 1953.NASA
Hangars at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia, in 1931. NASA The Variable Density Tunnel at Langley. NASA Aerial view of the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory in Sunnyvale, California, in 1944. NASA Aerial view of the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1945.NASA Within a few years, the NACA’s role began to expand with the establishment of research facilities. The Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, today NASA’s Langley Research Center, in Hampton, Virginia, opened on June 11, 1920. Over the next few decades, Langley served as a testing facility for new types of aircraft, using wind tunnels and other technological advances. The Ames Aeronautical Laboratory in Sunnyvale, California, today NASA’s Ames Research Center, opened in 1940 and the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory in Cleveland, today NASA’s Glenn Research Center, in 1941. The three labs achieved many breakthroughs in civilian and military aviation before, during, and after World War II. The Cleveland lab, renamed the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in 1948, concentrated most of its efforts on advances in jet propulsion.
The NACA High-Speed Flight Station, now NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, at Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert. NASA The Bell X-1, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier in 1947.NASA The first sounding rocket launch from the Pilotless Aircraft Research Station at Wallops Island, Virginia, in 1945.NASA After World War II, the NACA began work on achieving supersonic flight. In 1946, the agency established the Muroc Flight Test Unit at the Air Force’s Muroc Field, later renamed Edwards Air Force Base, in California’s Mojave Desert. In a close collaboration, the NACA, the Air Force, and Bell Aircraft developed the X-1 airplane that first broke the sound barrier in 1947. Muroc Field underwent several name changes, first to the High-Speed Flight Station in 1949, then in 1976 to NASA’s Dryden, and in 2014 to Armstrong Flight Research Center. In 1945, the NACA established the Pilotless Aircraft Research Station on Wallops Island, Virginia, now NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, as a test site for rocketry research, under Langley’s direction. From the first launch in 1945 through 1958, the NACA launched nearly 400 different types of rockets from Wallops.
Shadowgraph of finned hemispherical model in free flight shows shock waves produced by blunt bodies.NACA Meeting of the NACA’s Special Committee on Space Technology in May 1958.NASA In the 1950s, the NACA began to study the feasibility of spaceflight, including sending humans into space. In 1952, NACA engineers developed the concept of a blunt body capsule as the most efficient way to return humans from space. The design concept found its way into the Mercury capsule and all future American spacecraft. Following the dawn of the space age in 1957, the NACA advocated that it take the lead in America’s spaceflight effort. The Congress passed, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation to create a new civilian space agency, and on Oct. 1, 1958, NASA officially began operations. The new organization incorporated the NACA’s research laboratories and test facilities, its 8,000 employees, and its $100 million annual budget. Many of NASA’s key early leaders and engineers began their careers in the NACA. The NACA’s last director, Hugh Dryden, served as NASA’s first deputy administrator.
For more information about the NACA and its transition to NASA, read former NASA Chief Historian Roger Launius’ book NASA to NASA to Now: The Frontiers of Air and Space in the American Century. Watch this video narrated by former NASA Chief Historian Bill Barry about the NACA.
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By NASA
Wayne Johnson, who in 2012 earned the highest rank of Fellow at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, is known worldwide as an expert in rotary wing technology. He was among those who provided help in testing Ingenuity, NASA’s Mars helicopter.NASA / Eric James NASA Ames’ Wayne Johnson Elected to 2025 Class of New Members of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE)
Dr. Wayne R. Johnson, aerospace engineer at Ames Research Center, will be inducted as a new member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (NAE), class of 2025, on October 5, 2025, for his 45+ years of contributions to rotorcraft analysis, tiltrotor aircraft development, emerging electric aircraft, and the Mars Helicopter development. NAE members are among the world’s most accomplished engineers from business, academia, and government and are elected by their peers. The full announcement was released to the press on February 11, 2025 from NAE and is at
https://www.nae.edu/19579/31222/20095/327741/331605/NAENewClass2025
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