NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope uses machine learning from Google for latest discovery

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has made its latest discovery using machine learning from Google, the US space agency said. NASA will announce the discovery made by Kepler, which has been searching for alien worlds since 2009, on December 14. 

"The discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google," NASA officials said. "Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence, and demonstrates new ways of analysing Kepler data," they said. 

Kepler has gazed at more than 150,000 stars and continues to transmit back data that leads to important discoveries of celestial objects in our galaxy, including first-time observations of planets outside our solar system. When Kepler launched in March 2009, scientists did not know how common planets were beyond our solar system, according to NASA. Thanks to Kepler's treasure trove of discoveries, astronomers now believe there may be at least one planet orbiting every star in the sky, the US space agency said. 

Kepler completed its prime mission in 2012 and went on to collect data for an additional year in an extended mission. In 2014, the spacecraft began a new extended mission called K2, which continues the search for planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, while introducing new research opportunities to study young stars, supernovae and other cosmic phenomena.