Image credit: NASA/Tim Pyle

NASA Finds Earth-Size Planets In Habitable Zone !

NASA’s Kepler mission has done it again, another amazing discovery.

NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, which is a region where liquid water could exist on the planets surface. Five of which are around Earth’s size and orbit in the habitable zone of a smaller version of Earth’s Sun.

“In one generation we have gone from extraterrestrial planets being a mainstay of science fiction, to the present, where Kepler has helped turn science fiction into today’s reality,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a NASA press release.

Kepler also found the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star outside of our solar system – six confirmed planets orbiting a star named Kepler-11, which is located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth. Earth is one of eight planets orbiting the Sun.

The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to September 17,2009, of more than 156,000 stars in only 1/400 of the sky.

“The fact that we’ve found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy,” said William Borucki of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the mission’s science principal investigator.

The Kepler-11 findings will be published in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Nature.