In a remarkable breakthrough, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has identified an Earth-like planet named Kepler-186f. This planet sits comfortably within the habitable zone, often called the “Goldilocks zone,” of a neighboring star in the Cygnus constellation, about 500 light-years away. This marks the first discovery of an Earth-sized planet within the habitable zone of another star.

Even more thrilling is the existence of four other planets orbiting the same star in the Kepler-186f system. If this neighboring star resembles our Sun, the potential for life on Kepler-186f becomes even more fascinating.

“We are only aware of one planet where life thrives – Earth. In our quest to find life beyond our solar system, we focus on finding planets with features similar to our home planet,” explains Elisa Quintana, a research scientist at the SETI Institute and lead author of the paper published in Science. “The discovery of an Earth-sized habitable zone planet is a major breakthrough.”

The star in the Kepler-186f system has half the mass and size of our Sun, and it provides only a third of the energy we receive from our Sun. Kepler-186f completes one orbit around its star in 130 days.

This discovery contributes to the growing number of estimated 40 billion Earth-sized planets believed to exist in our Milky Way galaxy. It offers an exciting hint at the possibility of discovering life beyond our solar system.