NASA Kepler 90 discovery: Spacecraft finds an entire new solar system similar to Earth's with family of planets

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered a whole solar system similar to Earth's with a family of eight planets.

The US space agency gave the fascinating and much-anticipated update on its Kepler spacecraft planet-hunting mission on Thursday.

For the first time in history, humans have now discovered a solar system with just as many planets as our own, the expert astronomers revealed.

The family of eight exo-planets - meaning planets outside our solar system - orbit the Kepler-90 star, which looks similar to our sun but is 2,545 light years from Earth.

"Today Kepler confirms stars can have large families of planets just like our solar system," NASA said in the press conference.

Like our solar system, the planets follow a pattern, with the biggest planets positioned nearer to the star. It is possible the Kepler-90 star may have even more planets in its orbit.

"We have may only scratched the surface," NASA added, suggesting there may be more solar systems filled with planets elsewhere in the universe.

The major breakthrough was made with the help of Google’s artificial intelligence technology, which taught computers how to analyse the data sent down from the telescope and spot new planets.

When machines discovered an eighth planet orbiting the Kepler-90 star, called Kepler 90i, it meant finally scientists had discovered a solar system equal in size to our own.

Kepler 90i is a sizzling, hot, rocky planet that orbits its star every 14.4 days, NASA said.

“The Kepler-90 star system is like a mini version of our solar system," said NASA's Andrew Vanderburg, an astronomer at the University of Texas. "You have small planets inside and big planets outside, but everything is scrunched in much closer."

The pattern of the planets in our solar system means bigger planets are formed further away from the star in a cooler orbit, where water and ice can stay solid and clump together.

This same order is seen around the Kepler-90 star and could be evidence a similar phenomenon is happening there.

NASA's Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009 to hunt for Earth-sized planets in other solar systems, known as “exo-planets”.

Thanks to the spacecraft’s groundbreaking research, scientists now believe there may be at least one planet orbiting every star in our night sky.

Scientists working on the mission have so far discovered 21 Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars.

Thursday's announcement was made jointly by Paul Hertz, Andrew Vanderburg and Jessie Dotson from NASA and Christopher Shallue of Google.

The Kepler observatory completed its first mission in 2012 and went on to spend an extra year collecting more data.

Since 2014, it has been on its latest mission called K2, which continues to search for planets orbiting other stars in habitable zones where liquid water could exist.

It has learned that there are three types of exoplanets: gas giants, hot-super-Earths in short period orbits and ice giants. Scientists working on Kepler are now looking to find terrestrial planets – meaning half to twice the size of Earth.

One of its most exciting discoveries was in 2015 when scientists noticed a singular star with a strange brightness which would sometimes dip for days on end.

In February, astronomers at Liverpool John Moores University said three planets which could support life were discovered in a solar system just 39 light years from Earth.

Earlier this week scientists said a huge object passing Earth at 196,000 mph could be an alien spacecraft.

The bizarre cigar-shaped object was thought to be an interstellar asteroid but its shape and speed has led some experts to suggest it could actually be a sign of intelligent life.