According to reports, NASA is going to hold a press conference in order to talk about the latest discoveries made by the Kepler Space Telescope's planet-hunting mission. Astronomers are close to discovering an Earth-like planet in the Universe, if what NASA is saying turns out to be correct.

The Kepler was launched in 2009 and it is the first mission from the agency that is looking for Earth-like planets in the habitable zone, which is a region surrounding a star, where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet could be ideal for presence of water.

From the time when Kepler was launched, it had confirmed finding of over 1,000 planets and additional 3,000 'planet candidates' have also been found, which indicates that their existence has not been confirmed until now. As per reports, they all have different sizes and orbital distances from our planet.

NASA said in a statement, "The first exoplanet orbiting another star like our sun was discovered in 1995. Exoplanets, especially small Earth-size worlds, belonged within the realm of science fiction just 21 years ago". It added that at present, following thousands of discoveries, astronomers are on the verge of discovering something that was just in dreams for many years.

This information has come into light as New Horizons probe returned images of icy mountain ranges that were found in the heart-shaped region of Pluto.