However, thanks to recent technological advances, the last three decades have brought on a slew of astronomy data such that there are now an estimated 5,307 exoplanets in 3,910 planetary systems (as of February 2023). While finding exoplanets (meaning planets outside of our own solar system) is no longer a significant challenge, what is difficult is finding the habitable ones — meaning those that could sustain life on Earth as we know it. Currently, only an estimated 1.5 percent of exoplanets discovered have been catalogued as potentially habitable worlds.
