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NASA discovers an Earth-like planet 100 light-year away from us
13 Jan, 2023 / 02:50 PM / OMNES Media LLC

Source: http://www.mashable.com

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has discovered another Earth-like planet, which seems rocky and is 95% of its size. Named TOI 700 e, it orbits is seen orbiting around a star and may have water on it, says NASA.

Before this, three other planets were discovered in TOI 700 system, namely TOI 700 b, c, and d — and are 100 light-years away. NASA says that TOI 700 is a red dwarf star in the constellation Dorado, and the plates orbit around it. However, d and e planets orbit in the "habitable zone."

A red dwarf star is cooler than our Sun, and is in abundance in our Milky Way galaxy, amounting to 70% of all stars.

On the other hand, a habitable zone, known as the "Goldilocks zone," is a name for an area where a planet is about the right distance from a star. The distance helps the planet to create water, as well as have weather that is not too hot or cold for life.

Why even tell us about the planet? pic.twitter.com/SKewDMIeEa

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Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said, "This is one of only a few systems with multiple, small, habitable-zone planets that we know of."

Gilbert was a part of this project and said that planet e is 10% smaller than planet d. TOI 700 e and d take 28 days and 37 days to orbit around their star, respectively.

The discovery was made by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), whose goal is to discover more planets and stars.

During its two-year-long mission, TESS surveyed the solar systems for scientists. It also looked after the brightness of stars “for periodic drops caused by planets moving past them”. Although the project ended in 2020, TESS was still functioning, which lead to the discovery of this planet after a year.

Scientists have identified an Earth-size world, called TOI 700 e, orbiting within the habitable zone of its star.

Data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Robert Hurt/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center pic.twitter.com/7F5QSbaJ7L

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Ben Hord, a graduate researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said, "If the star was a little closer or the planet a little bigger, we might have been able to spot TOI 700 e in the first year of TESS data. But the signal was so faint that we needed the additional year of transit observations to identify it."

The satellite has been able to create pictures for 75% of the galaxy and discovered 66 new exoplanets and worlds beyond our solar system. There are about 2,100 new candidates that astronomers are in the process of finding whether they are new exoplanets.

The finding of planet e cements the fact that the satellite can help "us find smaller and smaller worlds," Gilbert said.