Some planets are easy to sort. Earth is rocky. Neptune is wrapped in a thick blanket of gas and ice. Jupiter is a giant. Then there are worlds like TOI-1266 b, which sit in the messy middle and make planetary science far more interesting. TOI-1266 b is a sub-Neptune exoplanet about 117 light-years from Earth. It orbits a small, cool M-dwarf star, a type of star that is far more common than Sun-like stars in our galaxy. With a radius about 2.5 times that of Earth, TOI-1266 b i

Some exoplanets draw attention because they might be warm, ocean-bearing worlds. Kepler-441 b is interesting for a different reason. It is likely cold, dimly lit, and locked into a long, quiet orbit around a small red dwarf star more than 900 light-years away. Kepler-441 b sits in the constellation Cygnus, about 926 light-years from Earth. It is often described as a super-Earth, meaning it is larger than Earth but smaller than planets like Neptune. Its year lasts 207.2 Earth

A launch schedule is never just a calendar. It is a forecast of what humanity wants to learn next, where engineers are placing their biggest bets, and which technologies are ready to leave the test stand.