NASA has found a planet that may be habitable. The discovery was made by the Transiting Exoplanet Reconnaissance Satellite and announced on Tuesday the 10th, during the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, in Seattle.
The celestial body, called TOI 700, is located in a “habitable zone,” a region around a star that allows water to accumulate on a planet’s surface, and thus makes life possible.
Characteristics of the planet discovered by NASA
The planet is one of the few in the star’s habitable zone that is Earth-like in size. The system in it contains three more planets: TOI 700 b, c, d. Of the four, only two can live.
The celestial body is located in the TOI 700 planetary system, 100 light-years from Earth (about 10 trillion km), in the constellation Dorado, and completes an orbit every 28 days. Moreover, it is probably stony and has a volume of 95% of the volume of Earth.
Discovery Alert 📣
A second Earth-sized planet has been found lurking in a habitable zone near a star. It joins three other planets in a red dwarf system 100 light-years away in the southern constellation of Dorado. https://t.co/82uDGPvgUt pic.twitter.com/oFRy2MQhNo– NASA Exoplanets (@NASAExoplanets) January 10, 2023
“This is one of the few systems with many habitable minor planets that we know of,” he said. Emily GilbertMember 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.
