NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft travels at 36,373 miles per hour (58,536 km/h), If it was aimed toward this planet, which is 4.2 light-years away, it would take about 78,000 years to get there.




The star closest to the sun hosts a planet that may be very much like Earth, a new study reports.


Astronomers have discovered a roughly Earth-size alien world around Proxima Centauri, which lies just 4.2 light-years from our own solar system. What's even more exciting, study team members said, is that the planet, known as Proxima b, circles in the star's "habitable zone" — the range of distances at which liquid water could be stable on a world's surface.


"We hope these findings inspire future generations to keep looking beyond the stars," lead author Guillem Anglada-Escude, a physics and astronomy lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, said in a statement."The search for life on Proxima b comes next."