In its search for potentially habitable planets beyond our solar system, NASA’s TESS satellite has discovered an exoplanet similar in size to Earth and located in the so-called habitable zone. Which means the planet, catalog named TOI 700e, could have a temperate climate and liquid water, the US space agency NASA reports on its website.
Two years ago, NASA astronomers discovered the Earth twin TOI 700d in the same system. Now, with TOI-700e, they have discovered another potentially habitable world around the sun TOI 700a. “This is one of the few systems known to have multiple minor planets in habitable zones,” said Emily Gilbert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. Planet TOI 700e is about ten percent smaller than TOI 700d, according to the JPL researcher.
The exoplanet TOI 700e is about a hundred light-years from Earth and therefore relatively close – in astronomical terms – reported Gilbert, who presented the discovery on behalf of her team at the 241st annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. The Earth-like celestial body therefore takes 28 days to revolve around its central star (TOI 700a).
Mission TESS was launched in April 2018
A number of such Earth-like exoplanets have already been discovered in the past, in particular by the Kepler space telescope. For the planet hunter TESS (pictured below), whose mission started in April 2018, it was the second discovery of this kind. What TOI 700e consists of is now being investigated further.
The size of a refrigerator, four cameras
TESS (short for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) is about the size of a refrigerator and is equipped with four cameras. Like its predecessor, the Kepler telescope, the observatory observes the light of specific stars in space. TESS is said to find small rocky planets as well as huge celestial objects – and generally covers a much larger area than “Kepler”.
Source: Krone
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