NASA Finds 10 'Earth-Like' Worlds

Astronomers using the Kepler space telescope have detected 219 possible new exoplanets in our galaxy, including 10 relatively small, rocky and possibly habitable planets similar to our own, NASA announced.

These are the last additions to the catalog of exoplanets compiled during the first phase of the Kepler mission, when the space telescope scanned some 200,000 stars in the Cygnus constellation in an effort to find worlds beyond our own. The official catalog now contains 4,034 total "candidates" - tiny blips in the data that are thought to signal the presence of a planet around a star. Of these, 49 fit squarely into their star's "habitable zone," that Goldilocks region where liquid water can pool on the surface and life may be able to thrive.