Since the first exoplanet was confirmed orbiting a sunlike star in 1995, scientists have discovered over 5,000 of these distant worlds.
More than half of these discoveries were made by NASA's Kepler space telescope, which launched in 2009 to determine how common Earth-like planets are throughout the Milky Way galaxy. The Kepler space telescope was retired in 2018 having discovered more than 2,600 exoplanets.
