NASA has announced the discovery of 715 new planets orbiting stars other than our own sun, essentially doubling the number of such planets previously discovered, according to USA Today.

The planets were found by using data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft.

Researchers confirmed this week that there has never been so many verified "exoplanets," as they're called, reported before at the same time.

"What we've been able to do is strike the mother lode, get a veritable exoplanet bonanza," planetary scientist Jack Lissauer of the NASA Ames Research Center said at a press conference, according to USA Today.

At least four of the new planets are in the habitable zone, which is known as the band around a star where the temperature on a planet's surface is most likely warm enough for water.

All four are twice as big across as the Earth is as well, according to USA Today.

Before now, most verified planets outside our solar system were closer in size to Jupiter, which is 87,000 miles across. Earth is around 8,000 miles across.

Most of the newly discovered planets are small and are traveling around one star on a circular, flat path, similar to our arrangement.

"That reminds me of something, and that's home," Kepler scientist Jason Rowe of the SETI Institute said at the press conference, according to USA Today. "It's interesting to look at the Kepler data set and see all these scaled-down versions of our own solar system."

Studies discussing the new planet total will be published in new issues of The Astrophysical Journal.

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