NASA has found a planet that may be habitable. The discovery was made by means of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and was announced on Tuesday 10, during the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Association, in Seattle.
The celestial body, named TOI 700, is located in a “habitable zone”, a region around a star that allows the accumulation of water on the surface of a planet and, thus, makes life possible.
Characteristics of the planet discovered by NASA
The planet is one of the few in a star’s habitable zone that is similar in size to Earth. The system it is in has three other planets: TOI 700 b, c, d. Of the four, only two can be inhabited.
Located in the TOI 700 planetary system, the celestial body is 100 light years from Earth (about 10 trillion kilometers), in the Constellation Dorado, and completes an orbit every 28 days. Furthermore, it is probably rocky and is 95% the size of Earth.
Discovery Alert 📣
A second Earth-sized planet is found lurking in a nearby star’s habitable zone. It joins three other planets in a red dwarf system 100 light-years away in the Southern constellation Dorado. https://t.co/82uDGPvgUt pic.twitter.com/oFRy2MQhNo— NASA Exoplanets (@NASAExoplanets) January 10, 2023
“This is one of the few systems with several small, habitable-zone planets that we know of,” he said. Emily Gilberta member of NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory.
According to Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, the TESS satellite was designed and launched specifically to identify Earth-sized celestial bodies orbiting nearby stars.
