Kepler-442b
Distance: 1,206 Lightyears
Star: Kepler-442
Constellation: Lyra
Another exoplanet discovered by NASA’s Kepler Spacecraft, the Kepler-442b planet is pretty impressive. Discovered on January 6, 2015, it quickly made some eyes pop. The world has a lot of promise, which in spite of the distance, made some feel it should be among the planets that could house human life one day.
There are some drawbacks, however. The biggest issue is that the gravity is 30% stronger on Kepler-442b compared to Earth’s gravity. The star it orbits, Kepler-442, is younger than our Sun at around 2.9 billion years old. The temperature sits at a solid 4402 K. Although it gives off around 11% less luminosity compared to the Sun, this is not a dealbreaker. It also takes slightly over 112 days to rotate around its star. This puts it rather close to its star, slightly more than Mercury is to our Sun. Yet due to the temperature Kepler-442 gives off, the environment is not adversely affected. It also only gets around 70% of the sunlight Earth gets from our Sun. None of which are problematic. Of course, further study is needed.