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Astronomers hunting for another Earth have found what may be the closest match yet, a potentially rocky planet circling its star at the same distance as the Earth orbits the Sun, NASA has said.

Named Kepler-452b after the Kepler Space Telescope, which discovered it, the exoplanet is about 60 percent larger than Earth, making it a type of planet called a super-Earth, NASA disclosed at a news conference that was live-streamed online.

This is the first Earth-like planet found orbiting a Sun-like star.