A NASA space tracking system has detected a planet in a distant solar system orbiting a small star about 100 light-years away, which is 95% the size of Earth.
This is the fourth planet to be discovered orbiting a small red dwarf star located about 100 light-years from Earth and known as M TOI 700. It takes only 28 days for the planet to orbit its star. The planet – named TOI 700 e – is likely to be rocky, according to the NASA website.
The satellite responsible for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey, known as the TESS mission, had found several planets previously, but they were not habitable, and they were rarely so close to the size of Earth.
It is reported that in 2020 a planet called TOI 700 d was discovered, and it was also the size of Earth.
High possibilities indicate the presence of water on the surface of the two discovered planets, especially since they are at an appropriate distance from the two stars that revolve around them, which means that the water – if any – will not evaporate due to the high temperature resulting from the approaching star. And the possibility of liquid water indicates that the planets themselves could be – or may have once been – habitable and life on their surface, according to CNN.
The discovery of the fourth planet was announced Tuesday at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, and a study about the planet has been accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal.
“This is one of only a few solar systems with multiple, minor planets and habitable zones that we know about,” Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California who led the research team, said in a statement posted on NASA’s website. .
It is worth noting that NASA’s TESS mission, launched in 2018, monitors large parts of the night sky for 27 days at a time, staring at the brightest stars and tracking their changes in brightness.
Scientists say that the degrees of decrease in the brightness of the stars indicate the presence of planets orbiting them in so-called transit cases. The mission began observing the southern sky in 2018, and then switched to the northern sky.
In 2020, the mission refocused on the southern sky again for further studies, revealing the fourth planet in the solar system, TOI 700-. (DW)
