The MIT mission discovers a planet the size of the Earth orbiting a nearby star

Scientists using a satellite telescope to search for shadows of planets passing in front of stars have discovered a planet the size of the Earth orbiting a star near the planet, 52 light-years from Earth, has announced Tuesday the MIT.

The new planet HD, 21749c, orbits around the star HD 21749. It surrounds the star in 7.8 days, discovered a team of astronomers led by the MIT. The planet is probably rocky and uninhabitable, with surface temperatures of up to 800 degrees, said MIT.

The planet was discovered by the satellite Transiting Exoplanet Satellite Survey, or TESS, a NASA-led astrophysics exploration mission managed by MIT. The discovery is detailed Tuesday in an article published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

TESS was launched on April 18, 2018 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the mission to find planets outside our solar system, including those that could support life.

This is the first exoplanet of the size of the Earth discovered by TESS, and it is the smallest discovery.

"For very close and very bright stars, we expected to find up to twenty Earth-sized planets," says Diana Dragomir, lead author and TESS member, a postdoctoral researcher at the Kavli Institute for space research and astrophysics of MIT. "And we are there. This would be our first project and it is an important step for TESS. This paves the way for finding small planets around even smaller stars, and these planets can potentially be livable. "

TESS is designed to surround the Earth by pointing its four cameras outward, covering almost the entire sky. The harbinger of an exoplanet is a dive into the starlight that passes in front of or "transits" from its host star.

During a two-year mission, the TESS aims to find for the astronomy community at least 50 small rocky planets and estimate their masses, the university announced. Until now, he has found 10 smaller planets than Neptune.

The researchers had previously discovered a "sub-Neptune" planet also revolving around the HD 21749, every 36 days. They decided to re-examine the data to see if there were any other signs of planets surrounding the same star.

"We know that these planets often come into families," says Dragomir. "So we searched for all the data again and that little signal came out."

Other exoplanets the size of the Earth have been discovered in the past. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, now retired, has examined more than 530,000 starts and has finally detected 2,662 planets, many of them the size of the Earth, MIT said. We have even seen a handful of people present conditions that could promote the development of life.