At 1pm Eastern Time, on Wednesday, February 22, 2017, NASA held a live press conference

to make an exciting announcement.

They had discovered a peculiar solar system located roughly 40 light years from Earth.

The heart of the system was an ultra-cool dwarf star.

It was first spotted in 2016 by astronomers using the Trappist telescope in Chile, and

so it was named Trappist 1.

The star appeared to be orbited by two Earth-sized planets.

In the months that followed, a team of astronomers led by Mikhail Jilon from the University of

Lige, working with NASA's Spitzer Telescope, made a further, incredible discovery.

What they found was described by Spitzer Center Manager Sean Carey as the most exciting discovery

in the history of the department.

What Jilon's team uncovered was not two Earth-sized planets, but seven.

Furthermore, three of the planets were found to be occupying the crucial Goldilocks zone,

an area of orbit necessary for the potential for water to pool on a planet's surface.

Such a discovery is the first time ever that so many potentially habitable planets had

been found surrounding one single star.

Not only that, but the masses and radii of these specific planets mark them out as possibly

the best ever to warrant further investigation for life.

Throughout the very least, a habitable ecosystem that could one day be explored.

In the words of NASA's Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate, Thomas

Sirbuchen, the discovery gives us a hint that finding a second Earth is not just a matter

of if, but when.

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