Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/SEATTLE: NASA‘s leading planet-hunting spacecraft has spotted an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting a small star about 100 light-years away.
The discovery of the new exoplanet was announced on Tuesday at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, and a research study about the exoplanet has been approved for publication by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
TOI 700 e is the fourth planet detected in the same system
The celestial body named TOI 700 e, is likely rocky and is 95 per cent the size of our world. It was discovered by the US space agency’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and is the fourth planet to be detected orbiting the small, cool M dwarf star TOI 700.
Another planet in the same system, discovered in 2020 and named TOI 700 d, is also the size of Earth. Both of these exoplanets are located in their star’s habitable zone, or just the right distance from the star that water in the liquid state might potentially exist on their surfaces.
The potential for the presence of liquid water on the planet suggests that the planets could be, or might once have been, habitable for life.
Other than TOI 700 d, two other planets have also been discovered in the system, called TOI 700 b and c. All of these were found by NASA’s TESS mission that was launched in April 2018. Since then, it has discovered 285 confirmed exoplanets and over 6,000 candidates.
