Nine more ‘Earths’ discovered

It didn’t find little green men, but the Kepler space telescope has discovered 1,284 new planets outside our solar system — more than doubling the number, NASA announced Tuesday.

Of the new trove of socalled “exoplanets,” almost 550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based on their size. And nine of those could have Earth-like conditions that could make extraterrestrial life possible.

The nine orbit in their suns’ habitable zone, which is the distance from a star where orbiting planets can have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool, NASA said.

The additional nine bring the number of potentially habitable planets outside our solar system to 21, scientists said.

“This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth,” said NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan.