we have worked so hard for all these years. >> reporter: borucki and his colleagues can't see kepler; it's too small and too far away. the fastest modern rocket ship would take 24 million years to get there. scientists also know little about the atmosphere or what the planet is made of; it could be more like gassy neptune than earth. but they can interpret data. what can you do with this knowledge? >> what we're trying to do with this knowledge is we're building a picture, and the picture is how many stars in all the galaxy have planets something like yours where life could be possible? if the answer is many, then there's probably a lot of life in our galaxy, and the next instruments that get built to look at the atmospheres, we look at just the close-by stars cause most of them will have planets, so you won't have to look very far. >> reporter: scientists are taking the discovery of a potentially habitable planet seriously, even if it is 600 light years away. at seti, search for extraterrestrial intelligence, they say they will follow up on nasa's discoveries. seti operates a bank o