Scientists from NASA's Kepler mission have discovered the first planet to orbit in the "habitable zone" — an area where liquid water could exist — of a star similar to our sun (via CNN).

Although Kepler-22b is 2.4 times the radius of the Earth and 600-light years-away, the distant planet's 290-day orbit around a host star like Earth's sun makes it similar to our planet, reports NASA.

Scientists still don't know the exact composition of Kepler-22b.

The Earth-like planet is just one of more than a 1,000 new planet candidate discoveries that will be announced by the team of Kepler scientists at a conference in Ames this week.

An artist's interpretation of Kepler-22b is depicted below:

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