NASA scientists have announced that they have discovered a new planet in a far away solar system that is very similar to our own.
The Kepler-90 system was believed to only have seven planets orbiting around its sun, but a joint research team founded by NASA and Google has revealed that there is an eighth planet as well, dubbed Kepler-90h.
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One other way that the Kelper-90 system resembles our own, is that the planets there orbit their sun from a mostly small-large, as reported by The Daily Mail.
NASA also says that this is the first time we have confirmation of far away star systems being home to “families as large as our own.”
The new planet is reportedly around 30% larger than Earth ands is “not a place you’d like to visit,” according to Andrew Vanderburg, an astronomer and NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas, Austin.
“It is probably rocky, and doesn’t have a thick atmosphere,” Vanderburg added, before also saying that temperatures on the surface are likely “scorching.” By his estimate they it would be around 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
NASA also explained that the planets in this solar system orbit their sun more “tightly” than the planets in out solar system orbit our sun, and said that they believe that sun to not be as hot as ours.
Additonlly, NASA reveled that Kepler-90h orbits it’s sun roughly once every 14.4 days.
The space research project partnership between NASA and Google was started in the hopes that they could potentially locate habitable planets in other solar systems, as well as make contact with extraterrestrial life. So far, they have located many new planets but no aliens.
