An astonishing scientific discovery that could forever change the destiny of the human race has been made - another planet capable of sustaining human life.

NASA has announced the Kepler Space Telescope launched in 2009 with the specific aim of locating exoplanets - planets with similar attributes to Earth and a safe enough distance from a parent star to sustain life - has confirmed it has found a new exoplanet that it says is "the closest twin to Earth so far".

NASA's Jon Jenkins confirmed that the name of the new exoplanet is called Kepler 452b.

According to Jenkins, the conditions for life on Kepler 452b seem positive

"Kepler 452b has spent six billion years in the habitable zone of its star. That's longer than the Earth has been around," he said.

"It would likely have a mass about five times that as Earth.

"We'd also expect the atmosphere to be thicker and have more cloud cover.

"We'd also expect the planet to have more active volcanoes."

The discovery of Kepler 452b is one of 500 new planets that have been picked out by the space observatory.

Twelve of the planets are less than twice Earth's diameter and are orbiting the habitable zones of their stars.

"This discovery has to be part of this very broad context," said Didier Queloz, a professor of astrophysics at Cambridge University.

"If we keep working as well and we keep being as enthusiastic and designing programs like we are doing so far, it's sure that the issue about life on other planets will be solved," he said.

"This discovery is certainly a good step forward."

An important fact about Kepler 452-b is that it receives proportionally the same amount of energy as Earth does.

After six years of scouting the cosmos, that dream has come true.