{"id":231453,"date":"2026-02-16T13:05:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T19:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/a-possible-ice-cold-earth-discovered-in-the-archives-of-the-retired-kepler-space-telescope"},"modified":"2026-02-16T13:05:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T19:05:14","slug":"a-possible-ice-cold-earth-discovered-in-the-archives-of-the-retired-kepler-space-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/a-possible-ice-cold-earth-discovered-in-the-archives-of-the-retired-kepler-space-telescope","title":{"rendered":"A possible ice-cold Earth discovered in the archives of the retired Kepler Space Telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-possible-ice-cold-earth-discovered-in-the-archives-of-the-retired-kepler-space-telescope.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists continue to mine data gathered by NASA\u2019s Kepler Space Telescope, retired in 2018, and continue to turn up surprises. A new paper reveals the latest: a possible rocky planet slightly larger than Earth, orbiting a sun-like star about 146 light-years away. The candidate planet, HD 137010b, might be remarkably similar to Earth, but it has one potentially big difference: It could be colder than perpetually frozen Mars.<\/p>\n<p>A promising Earth-sized exoplanet emerges An international science team published a paper on the discovery, \u201cA Cool Earth-sized Planet Candidate Transiting a Tenth Magnitude K-dwarf From K2,\u201d in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on Jan. 27, 2026. The team was led by astrophysics Ph.D. student Alexander Venner of the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany.<\/p>\n<p>The orbital period of the planet\u2014listed as a \u201ccandidate\u201d pending further confirmation\u2014is likely to be similar to Earth\u2019s, around one year. Planet HD 137,010 b also might fall just within the outer edge of its star\u2019s \u201chabitable zone,\u201d the orbital distance that could allow liquid water to form on the planet\u2019s surface under a suitable atmosphere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists continue to mine data gathered by NASA\u2019s Kepler Space Telescope, retired in 2018, and continue to turn up surprises. A new paper reveals the latest: a possible rocky planet slightly larger than Earth, orbiting a sun-like star about 146 light-years away. The candidate planet, HD 137010b, might be remarkably similar to Earth, but it [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}