And if we stick with the plan—hunting first for what we know—then small, rocky worlds are our best bet for finding evidence of life as we know it (we’ll talk about “life as we don’t know it” in the next section). There are roughly 2,000 stars at a distance of up to 50 light-years from our Solar System (64 of them are yellow-orange "G" stars like our Sun).As many as 15% of them can have Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones. Editor's note: This release has been updated to reflect the correct information on planet orbits and to include language about how this discovery relates to the field of astrobiology. HabEx will be sensitive to all types of planets; however its main goal is, for the first time, to directly image Earth-like exoplanets, and characterize their atmospheric content. Forbes takes privacy seriously and is committed to transparency. The Closest Exoplanet to Earth Could Be 'Highly Habitable' By Adam Mann 12 September 2018.
A potentially habitable Earth-sized exoplanet is similar in size and temperature to Earth, according to a new study. The first space mission to search for Earth-sized and smaller planets in the habitable zone of other stars in our neighborhood of the galaxy. In fact, Teegarden b has actually scored the highest Earth Similarity Index (ESI) ever. Most exoplanet habitable-zone research that followed continued to focus on terrestrial-like planet atmospheres orbiting main-sequence stars [see and references therein]. Gliese 581g was the first potentially habitable exoplanet discovered by astronomers in September 2010. The most distant potentially habitable planet confirmed is Kepler-443b, at 2,540 light-years …
In September, scientists discovered water vapor on a potentially habitable exoplanet for the first time ever. Since 1992, we've discovered over 4,000 exoplanets in star systems across the universe.