Scientists are crediting a loss of focus with the discovery of more than 100 heretofore unknown planets.

The discoveries — which included the first planetary system composed of planets similar to Earth — were confirmed through a collaborative effort involving Earth-based telescopes, including the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, the twin Gemini telescopes on Mauna Kea and in Chile, the University of California Observatories’ Automated Planet Finder, and the Large Binocular Telescope operated by the University of Arizona.

The effort had roots in a potentially ruinous failure in NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.

The telescope was originally dispatched to survey a patch of sky in the Northern Hemisphere and measure the frequency with which planets similar to Earth in size and temperature occurred around stars like the sun.

When the Kepler telescope’s pointing system broke, rendering it unable to keep focus on its target area, a second mission — dubbed K2 — was launched with an entirely different goal: observation of a broader ranger of cooler, smaller, red dwarf-type stars, which are more common than sunlike stars in the Milky Way.

Among the host of new planets identified and confirmed is a system of four potentially rocky planets. The planets are considerably larger than Earth, up to 50 percent bigger, and orbit a star less than half the size of the sun. Two of the planets experience radiation levels from their star that are comparable to those on Earth.

Ian Crossfield, a Sagan Fellow at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, said conditions on these planets could potentially support life.

“Because these smaller stars are so common in the Milky Way, it could be that life occurs much more frequently on planets orbiting cool, red stars rather than planets around stars like our sun,” he said.

Crossfield said that by the end of the K2 mission, scientists may be able to double or triple the number of known planets orbiting nearby bright stars.

“Because these planets orbit brighter stars, we’ll be able to more easily study everything possible about them, whether it’s measuring their masses with Doppler spectroscopy, already underway at Keck Observatory and APF — or measuring their atmospheric makeup with the James Webb Space Telescope in a few years.”