NASA spacecraft detects most Earth-like planet so far

Washington Post : The search for Earth-like planets circling other stars is escalating, with NASA’s $600 million Kepler mission having found 2326 candidate planets, of which 207 are similar in size to Earth. Ten of those, which includes the latest find—Kepler-22b—orbit their stars in the so-called habitable zone, a balmy band of space where water can be liquid. With a surface temperature of about 22 °C, Kepler-22b, located some 600 light-years from Earth, looks to be the best candidate so far. It orbits a star very similar to our own Sun and its year is almost the same length as Earth’s, said Natalie Batahla, a Kepler scientist. Whether Kepler-22b has a surface and an atmosphere is yet to be determined, however; more observations need to be made with other, ground-based telescopes. According to Batahla, “We are getting really close; we are really homing in on the true Earth-sized habitable planets.”