Has NASA found a new Earth? Space agency to reveal latest results from planet-hunting Kepler telescope

Jeff Parsons

© Provided by Mirror The Kepler Space Telescope was launched in 2009 with the mission of finding other habitable planets in the universe.

It's already discovered some possible contenders and now it seems there may have been a further discovery. The agency says it will hold a press conference to discuss its findings.

So far, the Kepler program has discovered around 1,000 so-called exoplanets outside our solar system.

It's not all been smooth sailing though. Last month, Kepler went into Emergency Mode and NASA's engineers lost touch with it. They managed to re-establish contact before proceeding to manoeuvre the spacecraft around to point it towards the centre of the Milky Way for another round of planet-hunting.

It's currently floating around 75 million miles away from Earth and - even at the speed of light - a signal would take 13 minutes to travel the distance.

"In 2014, the spacecraft began a new extended mission called K2. K2 continues the search for exoplanets while introducing new research opportunities to study young stars, supernovae and other cosmic phenomena," NASA said in a statement.

Last summer, Kepler revealed it had found an exoplanet capable of supporting life. It became known as Earth 2.0.

© Provided by Mirror Known as Kepler 452b, the planet sits around the same distance from its parent star as the Earth does.

"Kepler 452b has spent six billion years in the habitable zone of its star. That's longer than the Earth has been around," said NASA's Jon Jenkins at the time.

Astronomy fans will no doubt be hoping next week's announcement is just as important.