A Timeline of Firsts in Exoplanet Discovery

1992 – Astronomers announce their discovery of a rocky exoplanet, 1,170 light years away.
1995 – Swiss scientists find an exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star.
2003 – NASA launches the Spitzer Space Telescope for infrared detection of exoplanets.
2007 – The CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) satellite detects exoplanets transiting their stars; ESO (European Southern Observatory) announces discovery of the Gliese 581 system, including a “Super-Earth” found in the habitable zone of its star.
2008 – A digital time capsule containing 501 messages is aimed toward Gliese 581c from a radio telescope in Ukraine. It will arrive there in 2029.
2009 – The Kepler Space Telescope begins scanning a small area of sky containing more than 150,000 stars, eventually detecting more than 2,700 confirmed exoplanets and almost 400 in the habitable zone of their stars.
2017 – Kepler scientists discover the Trappist-1 system, including seven Earthlike planets.
2018 – A consortium of US space exploration organizations launches the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to continue the search for exoplanets.
2019 – The European Space Agency (ESA) launches the CHaracterizing ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) to gather further data from known exoplanets.
2021 –The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) explores the deep history of the universe and helps characterize exoplanets.
2026 – ESA’s planned launch of PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) will advance the discovery of exoplanets and the evolution of extrasolar systems.
2027 – The Nancy Roman Space Telescope will create direct images of Jupiter-size exoplanets.
2029 –The Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey mission (ARIEL) will examine the atmospheric structure of exoplanets to uncover their history and evolution.
2040 – The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HabEx), presently in the design stages, will directly image Earthlike exoplanets.