NASA’s
Kepler Mission, Discovers Bigger Earth.
This
size and scale of the Kepler-452 system compared alongside the Kepler-186
system and the solar system. Kepler-186 is a miniature solar system that would
fit entirely inside the orbit of Mercury.
This
artist's concept depicts one possible appearance of the planet Kepler-452b, the
first near-Earth-size world to be found in the habitable zone of star that is
similar to our sun.NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed the first
near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This
discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate
planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.”
The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the
smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone -- the area
around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting
planet -- of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b
brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030."On the 20th anniversary year of the
discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet
explorer has discovered a planet and star which most closely resemble the Earth
and our Sun," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science
Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “This exciting
result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0."Kepler-452b is
60 percent larger in diameter than Earth and is considered a super-Earth-size
planet. While its mass and composition are not yet determined, previous
research suggests that planets the size of Kepler-452b have a good chance of
being rocky.Highlighted
are 12 new planet candidates from the seventh Kepler planet candidate catalog
that are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in the stars' habitable
zone. There
are 4,696 planet candidates now known with the release of the seventh Kepler
planet candidate catalog - an increase of 521 since the release of the previous
catalog in January 2015.While Kepler-452b is larger than Earth, its
385-day orbit is only 5 percent longer. The planet is 5 percent farther from
its parent star Kepler-452 than Earth is from the Sun. Kepler-452 is 6 billion
years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun, has the same temperature, and
is 20 percent brighter and has a diameter 10 percent larger.