Getting Closer to Another Earth: Kepler’s 4500+ Planet Candidates

In the three and a half years of its primary mission, NASA's Kepler spacecraft produced a mountain of data. Astronomers continue to mine it, finding new likely planets all the time - including Kepler-452 b, the most Earth-like exoplanet found so far. Take a look at how Kepler's cache of candidate planets has grown over time, and how we inch ever closer to finding another Earth.