2014: First Earth-Size Planet In The Habitable Zone Of Another Star Discovered

Eleven years ago today, NASA made an intriguing announcement. Using the Kepler space telescope, the agency had discovered an exoplanet the size of Earth located in the habitable zone of another star. The planet was the first of a similar size to Earth discovered orbiting in a “Goldilocks zone,” or an area around a star that would not be too hot or too cold for liquid water to exist. As we can easily understand just by looking at Earth's neighboring planets in our solar system, being located at just the right distance from a star makes all the difference, so far as life (or potential life) is concerned.

“We definitely think it’s one step closer to finding a true Sun–Earth analogue,” said astronomer and study co-author Elisa Quintana, though she cautioned that since the star the exoplanet orbits is cool and dim (unlike our sun), the planet is more like a cousin to the Earth than a twin. By the next year, Kepler had discovered another planet considered the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun very similar to our star.

Senior writer Chris DeWeese edits Morning Brief, The Weather Channel’s weekday newsletter.