Nasa announcement, Earth 2 0 planet Kepler 452b discovered by Kepler Telescope: Nasa has announced the discovery of Kepler 452B by their Kepler space telescope - a planet very similar to Earth in the Milky Way. Unfortunately, it's also 1,400 light years away. A light year is the distance that a beam of light travels in a year, and is equal to around 5.9 trillion miles.

How long would it take to travel that far? Nasa's New Horizon probe - the one that recently took the amazing pictures of Pluto - left Earth's orbit faster than any other spacecraft before it, at around 36,373 mph.

If a spaceship was made that was capable of travelling at that speed constantly and carrying people, it would take them around 25.8 million years to get from Earth to Kepler 452b.