NASA teases 'discovery beyond our solar system': How to watch the announcement LIVE

NASA will host a news conference this week to reveal an exciting discovery it has made that exists "beyond our solar system".

It will likely have to do with exoplanets - the official name given to planets that orbit stars other than our sun.

If there is alien life in the universe, these exoplanets are the best place to start looking. NASA has been mapping exoplanets for a number of years.

When is the NASA press conference?

This artist's impression shows the planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B, a member of the triple star system that is the closest to Earth (Photo: Reuters)

The American space agency teased details of the official announcement - which will be made at 1pm in Washington on February 22, 2017.

That means it'll be revealed at 6pm on Wednesday evening over here in the UK.

The press conference is expected to last roughly an hour - although it could take longer depending on questions from the media. There may also be the possibility of questions from the public.

How can I watch the NASA press conference?

An artist's conception shows the rocky exoplanet GJ 1132b, located 39 light-years from Earth. New research shows that it might possess a thin, oxygen atmosphere - but no life due to its extreme heat(Photo: Dana Berry / Skyworks Digital / CfA)

NASA says it will be live streaming the whole event - as well as posting regular updates on social media.

The space agency has its own TV channel that it broadcasts on its website .

If you want to follow it on social media, you can use the hashtag #askNASA on Twitter. The agency says it will be used for questions as well.

Who is taking part in the NASA press conference?

A view of the surface of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri (Photo: SWNS)

There will be five scientists associated with the space agency taking part in the announcement. They are:

• Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington
• Michael Gillon, astronomer at the University of Liege in Belgium
• Sean Carey, manager of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at Caltech/IPAC, Pasadena, California
• Nikole Lewis, astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore
• Sara Seager, professor of planetary science and physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

What do we expect to learn?

An artist's impression of a planet inside NASA's "habitable zone" capable of supporting life (Photo: NASA)

There was a lot of excitement in July 2015 when NASA revealed it had found an exoplanet that closely resembled Earth.

We could be in for a similar bombshell tomorrow evening. Either NASA has discovered another potentially-habitable planet or it is likely to have more information on the ones we already know about.

The big news would be if it has found a planet with an oxygen-rich atmosphere.

The agency uses the Kepler Space Telescope to scan the cosmos for exoplanets that fall into the "Goldilocks zone" of its parent star. Any planet with a surface temperature and atmosphere that supports liquid is of huge interest to the agency.

Has NASA found alien life?

Aliens (Photo: Getty)

This is a possibility - but remains distinctly unlikely.

If NASA believes a planet is capable of supporting microbial life it will still need to gather more details to be sure. Thus could involve sending a probe to examine a planet more closely.

Since launching in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets.

For four years, the Kepler space telescope monitored 150,000 stars in a single patch of sky, measuring the tiny, telltale dip in the brightness of a star that can be produced by a transiting planet.

The agency is keeping tight-lipped about what it's found this week, but it did say that details of its findings will be published in the journal Nature once the press conference begins.

Advertisement