The interest in a particular project carried out by a high school senior stems from the fact that, unlike most class projects, this one went beyond theory to investigate ongoing efforts by scientists to discover Earth-like planets outside the solar system. In her study, Ana Humphrey examined Kepler Space Telescope archives to see where there could be more undiscovered Earth-sized planets lurking in the mission's data set.
Apart from the age of the student who conducted the study, the importance of the project lies in the question it raises. According to NASA, the Kepler Space Telescope was built for the purpose of looking for planets around other stars, especially those that resembled Earth in terms of size. Even after the retirement of the spacecraft, the archive became one of the biggest planetary datasets ever compiled.
