The NASA Kepler Mission Discovers Exoplanet Kepler-452b, An ‘Older Cousin to Earth’

NASA‘s Kepler mission has discovered a new exoplanet named Kepler-452b that a mission analyst has called, “an older, bigger cousin to Earth.” The new exoplanet is six billion years old, making it 1.5 billion years older than our Sun, and it orbits within the “goldilocks zone” of a similar G2-type star.

Kepler-452b is 1,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus, and has a “good chance” of being rocky like Earth according to the available data and comparison to other known exoplanets.

images via NASA