Scientists at the Ames Research Center NASA announced, moreover, that Kepler has identified 1,000 new planet candidates, ten of which have similar size and orbit the earth in the habitable zone of its star's solar system.
The Kepler planet-22b is the smallest found by spacecraft orbiting a star similar to earth in the 'habitable zone', where temperatures that allow the development of life.
Despite not knowing if the planet, which is larger than Earth, is rocky, gaseous or liquid, the deputy director of the team of scientists from Ames, Natalie Batalha, said: 'we are getting closer to finding a planet like the Earth '.
The Kepler observatory had previously hinted the existence of planets of similar size with our orbiting 'habitable zones', but this is the first time the fact is recorded.
Scientists, in addition to the discovery, also updated the number of planet candidates in the list that began to be drawn up in 2009. Planets are now 2,326, 207 have a similar size to Earth, 680 are larger and are called 'super Earths'.
Among the remaining 1,181 are about the size of Neptune, 203 are equivalent to the size of Jupiter and 55 are even bigger than Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.
Launched in March 2009, the Kepler spacecraft's mission is to collect data and evidence of planets orbiting around stars 'habitable zones', where liquid water could exist and therefore life.
The Kepler spacecraft detects planets and planet candidates by measuring the drop in brightness of more than 150,000 stars, which are observed to see whether these possible planets pass in front of these stars, a movement known as transit.
However, this technique is not sufficient to check the sign of a planet. Only three transits are recorded when the observatory launches the process to determine whether or not a possible planet. ADS HERE
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