Two Earth-size exoplanets discovered

This illustration provided by the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics shows artist's renderings of planets Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f compared with Venus and the Earth.

The Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun.

The discovery marks the next important milestone in the ultimate search for planets like Earth. According to NASA, the new planets are thought to be rocky. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth.

Kepler-20f is a bit larger than Earth, measuring 1.03 times its radius. Both planets reside in a five-planet system called Kepler-20, nearly 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. Kepler-20e orbits its parent star every 6.1 days and Kepler-20f every 19.6 days.