NASA is about to blow the lid on what it has found on its latest ‘Discovery’ mission in a conference this evening.

The space agency is keeping mum on exactly what will be revealed, but said it will "discuss the results of its latest Discovery mission" at 9pm on Thursday.

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Members of the press have been invited to a teleconference which will be streamed live.

And the public can ask questions on Twitter using the hashtag #AskNASA.

It follows the announcement that NASA had detected a comet and a comet asteroid hybrid approaching Earth which is set to reach us in early  2017.

One of the comets is large enough for us to see it streaking across the sky this week, scientists said.

However, it's unlikely tonight's announcements is connected.

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Tonight will focus on the Discovery programme, which opened in 1992 and has the goal of “unlocking the mysteries of the solar system”.

Previous missions include finding the ingredients for alien life in our solar system.

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In 2004 Discovery helped send a rocket to the dark side of Mercury and a recent mission made an astonishing discovery of ice on Ceres.

Water sources on the dwarf planet between Mars and Jupiter led many to speculate the likelihood of alien colonies.

Discovery is also behind the InSight Mars lander, which is slated to take off in May 2018.

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