NASA scientists discover Earth-like planet, 600 light years away

NASA’s Kepler mission has always been on the lookout for habitable planets and yesterday, they confirmed the presence of a planet that’s very similar to Earth, orbiting a star at a similar distance. The new planet is being called Kepler-22b. According to this news by NASA, the radius of the new planet is roughly 2.4 times the size of the Earth. There’s no confirmation on the composition of the planet. Kepler monitors the lights from stars and is contantly on the lookout for a drop in light at constant intervals to confirm that the object blocking the light is a planet. We won’t be inhabiting Kepler-22b anytime in the near future as the planet is some 600 light years away. The planet has a 290 days year and the star it orbits has roughly similar to our star, the Sun.

Kepler-22b, the newest Earth-like planet to be discovered

The Kepler-22b is one of the 48 planets that NASA has discovered, and placed in the habitable zone. These planets have more to themselves, than just being of a size similar to that of our home planet. moreover, they may possibly even be habitable. There are some 207 planets that have been discovered,  which are roughly the same size as Earth, 680 larger than Earth, 1,181 roughly the size of Neptune and 203, around the size of Jupiter and 55 larger than Jupiter.