Three Earth-like planets up there: NASA

Washington, Jan 7: In a major find, NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has discovered three new Earth-size habitable or "Goldilocks" zones around Sun-like stars. Of the three, two are likely made of rock like our Earth. Of more than 1,000 verified planets found by Kepler, eight are less than twice Earth-size and in their stars' habitable zone. All eight orbit stars are cooler and smaller than our Sun, the US space agency said in a statement. "Three of the newly-validated planets are located in their distant Suns' habitable zone, the range of distances from the host star where liquid water might exist on the surface of an orbiting planet," informed John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington DC. Two of the newly validated planets, Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b, are less than 1.5 times the diameter of Earth. The research paper reporting this finding has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.