NASA launches virtual reality website that lets space buffs explore alien planets beyond our solar system

NASA ​ has launched a new website offering space enthusiasts a 360 degree virtual reality view of alien planets beyond our solar system.

The US space agency’s Exoplanet Travel Bureau gives a glimpse into planets discovered by the Kepler space telescope.

Despite no images of the planets existing, scientists have created CGI landscapes replicating imagined surfaces of newly discovered Kepler-186f, Kepler-16b and TRAPPIST-1d.

The artist’s impressions of each planet are based on limited scientific data of the planets.

The website allows people to scroll across Kepler-16b’s mountainous surface and click on features including hypothetical water and various stars.

It is not known if the Earth-sized planet orbiting a red star much cooler than the Sun has an atmosphere but one can be added using the new tool.

Space buffs can also view the blood-red sky of TRAPPIST-1d and peruse travel posters of distant worlds such as PSO J318.5-22, where the "nightlife never ends" because the planet doesn’t orbit a star, but is instead floating freely through space.

Martin Still, program scientist for NASA’s newest space-based planet-hunting observatory, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, said: “Because Kepler-186f and the majority of Kepler-discovered planets are so distant, it is currently impossible to detect their atmospheres -- if they exist at all -- or characterise their atmospheric properties.

“Consequently, we have limited knowledge about what these distant worlds are really like, but these surface visualizations allow us to imagine some of the possibilities.”

Visit the distant worlds here.