NASA’s Kepler space observatory locates a pair of planets that could harbour alien life

The Kepler telescope that NASA launched with the intent of discovering new worlds is really racking up the planet count--from the time it recently located 1,284 new planets, the space-based observatory has been uncovering discoveries regularly.

Most recently, the telescope located four planets orbiting around a red dwarf star in the Aquarius constellation, of which two could possibly support life. These two planets happen to exist in the ‘habitable zone’ around the star, the location where liquid water is most likely to exist. These four planets are between 20 and 50 percent larger than Earth in diameter, and the two that could support life are known as K2-72c and K2-72e.

The interesting aspects about these two particular planets is the fact that their temperatures are barely 10 percent warmer and 6 percent cooler compared to the average temperatures on Earth, and they complete the orbits around their sun in the equivalent of 15 and 23 Earth days. Not much is known as yet about the construct of their atmosphere, but current information seems to indicate they could very well support life.

It may be a while until we can get closer look at them though, given that they’re at a distance of about 181 light years from us.