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  • Narrator: NASA's Kepler Mission has discovered the

  • first Earth-size planet orbiting in the habitable

  • zone of a star outside of our solar system.

  • The newly discovered planet is called Kepler-186f

  • and is about 10 percent larger than Earth.

  • Elisa Quintana: Kepler-186f is the first validated

  • Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of its

  • star. It's the outmost of five planets to orbit a

  • star that is smaller and cooler than the sun.

  • This planet orbits its star every 130 days and so

  • this places it in the habitable zone, where it's

  • in a region where it could have liquid water

  • on its surface.

  • Narrator: Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186

  • system, about 500 light-years from Earth in the

  • constellation Cygnus.

  • Thomas Barclay: This planet, Kepler-186f, orbits

  • a star that is cooler and dimmer than the sun.

  • So while we may have found a planet that is

  • the same size as Earth and receives a similar

  • amount of energy as to what Earth receives,

  • it orbits a very different star.

  • So, perhaps instead of an Earth twin, we've

  • discovered an Earth cousin.

  • Narrator: On the surface of Kepler-186f, the

  • brightness of its star at high noon is only as

  • bright as our sun appears to us about an hour

  • before sunset.

  • Scientists believe Kepler-186f is likely to be a

  • rocky world, but are unable to confirm its mass

  • and density.

  • Thomas Barclay: This is one of the big milestones

  • that we've been looking for in our attempts to

  • find out if there are places just like home and if

  • there's life out there. One of the big steps is

  • to say "Is there somewhere that looks, to all

  • intents and purposes, like Earth?" Well, we don't

  • know just yet, but we know that there are at least

  • places that look similar.

  • Narrator: Managed by NASA's Ames Research Center,

  • the Kepler mission collected this data using a

  • space-based telescope to search one part of the

  • galaxy for potentially habitable planets.

  • (Electronic Sounds of Data Musical Tones)

Narrator: NASA's Kepler Mission has discovered the

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