The illustration above depicts exoplanets. NASA’s Kepler space telescope team has identified 219 new planet candidates, 10 of which are near-Earth size and exist in the habitable zone of their star.

(NASA/JPL-Caltech)

At a Glance

More than 200 new planet candidates have been discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope.Ten of the planets are almost the size of the Earth.

NASA scientists Monday announced that more than 200 new planet candidates have been identified during its exoplanet-hunting Kepler mission.

, 10 of which are almost Earth-sizedand are within the habitable zone of their star, which falls in the range of distance where liquid water could exist on the surface of a rocky planet, according to a release.

The scientists also made another stunning discovery. Small planets fall into two distinct size groupings with different properties. Smaller planets were discovered to be smaller than 1.5 Earth radii and the others were determined to be larger than 2 Earth radii, according to NASA Sagan Fellow Courtney Dressing. There were few planets that fell in between those two sizings.

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“Finding two distinct groups of exoplanets is like discovering mammals and lizards make up distinct branches of a family tree,” study lead author Benjamin Fulton said in the release.

The discovery of the two differing planetsize groupings shows that roughly half of the known planets in the galaxy either have no surface or surfaces that lie beneath a thick, smothering atmosphere that is unlikely to host life, according to the release.

Additionally, rocky planets are commonly up to about 75 percent larger than Earth, according to NASA. Half of those planets take on a small amount of hydrogen and helium, which causes their size to swell dramatically. They then “jump” the size gap and become closer to Neptune’s size.

The Kepler space telescope has now identified 4,034 planet candidates, Kepler program scientist Mario Perez said during a press conference. Out of those found, 2,335 have been confirmed as exoplanets.

“The Kepler data set is unique, as it is the only one containing a population of these near Earth-analogs, planets with roughly the same size and orbit as Earth,” Perez said in the release. “Understanding their frequency in the galaxy will help inform the design of future NASA missions to directly image another Earth.”

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