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The first confirmed discovery of a rocky planet outside of our solar system has been announced by the team at NASA’s Kepler mission, an organization dedicated to finding planets in our galaxy. It is also the smallest planet ever found by the mission.

The planet orbits around the star Kepler-10 which is 560 light years from our solar system, it is very similar to our sun in temperature, mass and size but is almost 12 billion years old, 7.5 billion years older than the sun.

Unfortunately there is no chance of this planet harboring life as it orbits extremely close to its star, twenty times closer than Mercury orbits the sun. The planet Kepler-10b is 1.4 times the size of Earth and has daytime temperatures of around 1,400 C (2,500 F) giving it a surface of molten lava. Solar winds emitting from the star have not only stripped away its atmosphere but is also constantly sweeping away parts of its surface, leaving a trail of debris similar to a comet's tail when it gets close to the sun.

Kepler program scientist Douglas Hudgins said “The discovery of Kepler-10b, a bona fide rocky world, is a significant milestone in the search for planets similar to our own".

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