By Desiree Salas (media@latinospost.com) | First Posted: Jul 24, 2015 12:24 PM EDT

Not long after the announcement of an ambitious project aiming to search for alien life, NASA has revealed that the Kepler Space Telescope has found a planet exhibiting similar qualities as Earth.

"Researchers working with the Kepler mission suspect that Kepler 452b is a potentially rocky world with a thick atmosphere that may contain water," Mashable noted. "The newly-discovered planet orbits its star every 385 days, only about 5% longer than Earth's orbit around the sun."

This is, however, not the only "planet candidate" found by the telescope. About 500 new ones have been added to the 4,175 previously spotted by the telescope. However, it appears the Kepler 452b bears the most Earth-like quality among the potentials.

"We can think of Kepler-452b as an older, bigger cousin to Earth, providing an opportunity to understand and reflect upon Earth's evolving environment," explained NASA's Ames Research Center's Dr. Jon Jenkins, who is lead author of a paper featured in The Astronomical Journal, to The New York Times. "It's awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent six billion years in the habitable zone of its star, longer than Earth. That's substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet."

"While it's a bit farther from its star than Earth is from the sun, its star is brighter, so the planet gets about the same amount of energy from its star as Earth does from the sun. And that sunlight would be very similar to Earth's," CNN said.

As such, Dr. Jenkins was also asked if there has been an attempt to detect extrterrestrial activity on the planet. He replied, "I hope so."

Prior to this discovery, Kepler 186f was then considered the one with the most Earth-like characteristics. "That planet, no more than a 10th bigger than Earth, is about 500 light-years away from us. But it gets only about a third of the energy from its star as Earth does from the sun, and noon there would look similar to the evening sky here," CNN reported.

The Kepler Space Telescope's main objective is "to find so-called 'Goldilocks planets" in the habitable zone of stars - worlds where it's not too cold or hot for liquid water to form." The said telescope has since found 1,030 planets, NBC News added.

"Scientists will need to do follow-up observations in order to confirm that these planet candidates are, in fact, real worlds, but Kepler has a good batting average. About 90% of the candidates found by the space telescope are actual planets," Mashable said further.

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