New York, Aug. 27: Scientists working with Nasa’s Kepler satellite reported on Thursday that they might have spotted a planet just 1.5 times the diametre of Earth around a Sun-like star 2,000 light-years away.
“We’re still in the process of confirming this is a planet,” said Mr Matthew Holman, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, at a Nasa-sponsored news conference on Thursday.
This is the first announcement of a candidate Earth-size planet by the Kepler mission, which in March 2009 launched a one-tonne spacecraft to search for planets like ours that might just harbour life.
The planet was among more than 700 candidate planets that the team announced in June. If it is made of similar stuff as Earth, its mass would be three to four times as much.
Astronomers are quickly closing in on Earth-size planets elsewhere in the galaxy as they find planetary systems that look more like our solar system.
Earth-size planets in orbits that are not too hot or too cold are considered the most likely places to look for life elsewhere in the universe.