Exoplanets: from Discovery to Characterization and Beyond

Thousands of exoplanets are known to orbit nearby stars with evidence that nearly all stars in our Milky Way Galaxy have planets. Beyond their discovery, a new era of “exoplanet characterization” is underway with an astonishing diversity of exoplanets driving the fields of planet formation and evolution, interior structure, atmospheric science, and orbital dynamics to new depths. Exoplanets with masses and average densities that have no solar system counterparts are mysteries in their formation pathways as well as their interior composition and structure. The push to find smaller and smaller planets down to Earth size is succeeding and motivating the next generation of planetary models and telescopes to have the capability to find and identify planets that may be like Earth.