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U.S. space agency NASA announced that it will provide details of its latest discovery with the Kepler Space Telescope in a press conference scheduled for 9 a.m. PDT July 23, which you can watch live above.
The Kepler Space Telescope, which was launched back in 2009, is supposed to find other "habitable zones" in space. Specifically, the mission involves searching for planets that also support water, a vital ingredient for sustaining life. The mission has focused on six regions in space, looking into a star's brightness to indicate that it could be a planet.
For the last six years, the Kepler Space Telescope has made thousands of planetary discoveries and there have been 3,000 candidates for planets with a habitable zone, according to CTV.
"Exoplanets, especially small Earth-size worlds, belonged within the realm of science fiction just 21 years ago," NASA said in the press release.
"Today, and thousands of discoveries later, astronomers are on the cusp of finding something people have dreamed about for thousands of years - another Earth," the agency further hinted.
"We're now closer than we've ever been for finding a twin for Earth," said Fergal Mullally from the Kepler Science Office back in January, when NASA announced that the telescope was able to find a planet that has Earth's size, according to Wired.
Doing a press conference, rather than just releasing a research paper or statement, suggests that NASA may finally confirm if one of these candidates is closest and most similar to Earth.
They may have finally found Earth's twin.
