The National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States has spotted 1,284 new planets and there's reason to believe that nine of them could be habitable, reported The Guardian. Astronomers used data gathered using the Kepler space telescope to detect the planets in the “habitable zone”. The scientists were looking for planets that are close enough to a star to have surface water, yet at sufficient distance so that the star doesn't scorch the water out. This is referred to as the Goldilocks zone.

“This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth,” said Ellen Stofan, Nasa’s chief scientist. Mission scientist Natalie Batalha said that almost 550 of the newly confirmed planets could be rocky planets like Earth, and around three dozen planets have been detected in the Goldilocks zone.

The space agency's reserach has added nine more planets to the list of known exoplanets, thus taking the count to 21. The findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal on Tuesday