News Astronomy

Billions and billions of Earth-sized planets call Milky Way home

Using Kepler data, astronomers estimate that a sizeable fraction of sunlike stars have possibly habitable planets

SIMILARLY SIZED  Data collected by the Kepler spacecraft, shown in this artist’s rendering, indicate that the Milky Way is home to billions of potentially habitable Earth-sized planets. 

Wendy Stenzel/NASA

By Andrew Grant

- More than 2 years ago

The galaxy contains billions of potentially habitable Earth-sized planets, according to even the most conservative estimate drawing on data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope.