The age of exoplanets began in 1992, when astronomers detected a pair of planets orbiting a pulsar . Then, in 1995, astronomers discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a main sequence star. As NASA's Kepler and TESS missions got going, the number of confirmed exoplanets continued to rise.

By 2015, NASA announced that Kepler had discovered its 1,000th exoplanet. 2016 was a banner year for exoplanet detections with nearly 1,500 in that year alone. The total number reached 5,000 in March of 2022.

Now, NASA has announced that there are 6,000 confirmed exoplanets.

6,000 is a lot, though compared to the one hundred billion that may exist in the Milky Way, it's a tiny amount. Still, for a fledgling space-faring civilization like ours, it's something to celebrate.

The fact that we've found 6

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