The National Aeronautic and Space Administration has been in the news quite a bit. Recently, NASA's Kepler explorer has discovered an Earth-like exoplanet, Kepler-452b, in the constellation Cygnus. This may not seem like big news, since the Kepler Spacecraft has already detected more than 4,500 planets since it's launch in 2009.

The excitement comes from the fact that Kepler-452b has a 385-day orbit. Compare this to our 365-day orbit. Moreover, the sun that Kepler-452b is orbiting is 6 billion years old, which is only 1.5 billion years older than our own sun. In terms of size, Kepler-452b is 60 percent larger than Earth. NASA might have just found planet Earth's long lost sibling, separated at birth.

Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at the Ames Research Center in California says, "We can think of Kepler-452b as an older, bigger cousin to Earth, providing an opportunity to understand and reflect upon Earth's evolving environment."

This news announcement coming just a week after NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto at distance of 7,500 miles after traveling a staggering 3 billion miles in just nine-and-a-half years. The following image was captured by New Horizons, the highest resolution image to date.

The past few years have been good for NASA. The New Horizons spacecraft will proceed to relay information and images about Pluto which we knew very little about since it's discovery in 1930. Just two years ago, the Curiosity rover landed on Mars after a completely autonomous descent.

All of these achievement are slowly bringing NASA back into the public's eye after the drastic decline of popularity after the economic bailout back in 2008. At it's peak in 1996, NASA received 4.4 percent of the federal budget. Last year, it was a meek 0.5 percent. This lack of funding has caused massive growth in the privatization of spaceflight companies. NASA has been relying on these companies to sent supplies to the International Space Station. Last year, NASA awarded Boeing and SpaceX a joint $6.8 billion contract to transport astronauts to the ISS.

As this kind of delegation of duties begins, the question arises: Will we ever see NASA thrive as it did during the Space Race? With regards to Kepler-452b, does life exist on the planet?

I sure as hell hope so.