NASA scientists said on Tuesday that they have located an Earth-sized planet in the habitable region of its star.
According to NASA, which used information from its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the planet, known as TOI 700 e, is a member of the TOI 700 system, 95% the size of Earth, and most likely rocky.
“This is one of only a few systems with multiple, small, habitable-zone planets that we know of,” Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California who led the work, said in a statement on NASA’s website.
Three planets in the same system, known as TOI 700 b, c, and d, were previously found by NASA. The star’s habitable zone also includes planet d.
Gilbert said, “Planet e is about 10% smaller than planet d, so the system also shows how additional TESS observations help us find smaller and smaller worlds.”
It takes TOI 700 e 28 days to orbit TOI 700, a tiny red dwarf star about 100 light-years from Earth. A New York kid working as a NASA intern in 2020 discovered a circumbinary planet, which is a planet that orbits two stars and is 6.9 times bigger than Earth.
According to NASA, Wolf Cukier’s discovery was unusual since circumbinary planets are typically hard to spot and can only be found during a transit event, which occurs when one of the suns dims.
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