NASA have recently spotted a habitable Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting a small star about 100 light-years away from Earth.
The planet, named TOI 700e, is assumed to be rocky and 95% the size of the earth. The exoplanet is the fourth planet to be detected orbiting the small, cool M dwarf star called TOI 700. All four planets were discovered by NASA’s Transitioning Exoplanet Survey Satellite, otherwise referred to as the TESS mission.
This comes after the discovery of TOI 700d, which was discovered in 2020, and also happens to be the size of Earth. Both of these exoplanets exist in the star’s habitable zone, or just the right distance from the star that liquid water might potentially exist on their surface. The potential for liquid water suggests that the planets could be, or might once have been, habitable for living organisms.
The discovery of the fourth planet was announced on Tuesday at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, and a study about the exoplanet has been accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
‘This is one of only a few systems with multiple, small, habitable-zone planets that we know of,’ said lead study author Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory In Pasadena, California, in a statement.
‘If the star was a little closer or the planet a little bigger, we might have been able to spot TOI 700e in the first year of TESS data in 2018,’ said study co-author Ben Hord, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a graduate researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.
‘TESS just completed its second year of northern sky observations,’ said Allison Younblood, a research astrophysicist and the TESS deputy project scientist at Goddard. ‘We’re looking overly excited and looking forward to the other amazing discoveries hidden in the mission’s treasure trove data,’ she concluded.
Picture: Getaway Gallery
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