In the 1990s, astronomers confirmed the first planets orbiting stars beyond our sun. Since then, the tally has risen steadily, and last year it crossed a striking milestone: more than 6,000 known exoplanets. NASA’s Exoplanet Archive has captured not just the growing count but how dramatically the pace has accelerated, as new techniques and space telescopes have come on line. The steepest rises coincide with data releases from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which discovered thousands of new planets.

With such an extensive catalog of worlds, researchers can look for patterns. They can compare planet sizes, masses, and compositions; track how tightly planets orbit their stars; and measure the prevalence of different kinds of planetary systems. Those statistics allow astronomers to estimate how frequently planets form, and to start making informed guesses about how often conditions arise that could support life. The Drake Equation uses such estimates to tackle one of humanity’s most profound questions: Are we alone in the universe?

The sample is still shaped by the limits of current instruments, which favor large planets in close-in orbits, but that bias may soon ease. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, designed to survey wide swaths of the sky, is expected to find thousands of new planets, especially colder worlds far from their stars. It may reshape the discovery curve once again.

This article appears in the February 2026 print issue as “Six Thousand Alien Worlds and Counting.”

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