NASA discovers new exoplanet that could support liquid water

A group of scientists used reanalyzed data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope to discover an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting in its star’s habitable zone.

For the space agency’s purposes, habitable zone means the area around a star where a planet could support liquid water — and, potentially, other forms of life.

This artist’s illustration shows what Kepler-1649c could look like from its surface.

The planet was found when scientists examined older observations from Kepler, which was retired by the agency in 2018.

“While previous searches with a computer algorithm misidentified it, researchers reviewing Kepler data took a second look at the signature and recognized it as a planet,” the space agency said.

According to NASA, this distant world located 300 light-years from Earth is most similar to our home planet in size and estimated temperature.