Three New Potentially Habitable Planets Discovered

Anybody up for some planetsteading?

Scientists announced Thursday the discovery of three planets that are some of the best candidates so far for habitable worlds outside our own solar system—and they're very far away.

NASA's Kepler satellite, which is keeping an eye on more than 150,000 stars in hopes of identifying Earth-like planets, found the trio.

Two of the planets—Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f—are described in a study released Thursday in the journal, Science. They are part of a five-planet system in which the candidates for life are the farthest from the host star.

The host star—the equivalent of Earth's sun—takes the name Kepler-62, where the individual planets are designated by letters thereafter.

The third planet that's potentially habitable, but not included in the Science study, is called Kepler-69c. Liquid water could theoretically exist on the surfaces of any of them, researchers said.