By : David U

What does a planet need tosustain animal life?

The Maven satellite is going to help make Mars more habitable for humans, and eventually other animals.

The satellite will try to make Mars hospitable enough to for us to live on, but it will take at least a decade.

This is the newfound exo-planet Kepler-62f is imagined in an illustration. The shining star to the right is Kepler-62e. The star acts as a sun to the planet.

The Hubble telescope can find pictures of other habitable planets. Scientists can then study the planets from these images.

NASA’s Kepler Mission has detected changes in brightness in 500 sun-like stars, giving astronomers a much better idea about the nature and evolution of the stars. Humans will need a sun to survive on a different

planet.

Certain animals such as the Blob fish does not need sunlight to survive, unlike humans. Its habitat is deep underwater, were sunlight does not

reach.

This is a planet that looks like earth but it is what so ever. As far as planets go, HD 189733b, a giant, sizzling Jupiter-like world that swoops around its parent star every 2.2 days, couldn’t be more

different from Earth

The habitable zone seems to be the pinnacle of extraterrestrial living. If you're an alien with similar needs to life on Earth, then you'll need liquid water. If your planet exists outside your star's habitable zone,

well, you're in trouble. Either your world will be frozen like a block of ice, or boiling like a kettle. But say if your world had the ability to extend

your star's habitable zone? Such as it is with this planet.

Super-Earths get a lot of press. Mainly because "Earth" is mentioned. Sadly, most of these worlds are likely completely different to anything we'd call "Earth." And

you can forget calling the vast majority of them "Earth-like." It's simply a size thing -- they're bigger than Earth, yet a lot smaller than Jupiter, hence their

name, "super-Earth." Easy.

The end