NASA sees the surface of a distant rocky exoplanet

Data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope gave scientists a first glimpse of the surface conditions of a rocky exoplanet beyond the solar system.

The planet LHS 3844b is located 48.6 light-years from Earth and has a radius of 1.3 times that of Earth, according to NASA. The exoplanet, which orbits around a small star called dwarf M, was first spotted by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Satellite Survey (TESS) satellite in 2018.

A light-year measures the distance in space and equals 6 trillion miles.

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New research indicates that the surface of the mysterious planet may resemble the moon or mercury of the Earth, NASA said in a statement released on Monday. "The planet probably has little or no atmosphere and could be covered with the same cooled volcanic material that is found in the dark areas of the moon's surface, called the mare," he says.

The Spitzer infrared space telescope was able to detect light from the surface of the LHS 3844b. "The planet is making a complete revolution around its parent star in just 11 hours," NASA said in its statement. "With such a tight orbit, the LHS 3844b is most likely" locked by the tides, "that is, when one of the sides of the planet is facing the star permanently. The side facing the stars, or side day, is about 710 degrees Celsius (1410 degrees Fahrenheit). "

The research study was published in the journal Nature.

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"We have a lot of theories about planetary atmospheres around M dwarves, but we have not been able to study them empirically," said Laura Kreidberg, lead author of the study and researcher at Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., In the statement. "Now, with LHS 3844b, we have a terrestrial planet outside our solar system where, for the first time, we can determine observatively that an atmosphere is not present."

TESS discovered the planet through what is known as the "transit method", which uses the gradation of a parent star to identify the transit of objects that gravitate around it.

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The Spitzer Space Telescope has studied the reflectivity of the planet's surface. "The LHS 3844b seems to be the smallest planet for which scientists have used light from its surface to know its atmosphere (or lack thereof)," NASA said in its statement.

The planet is thought to be covered with basalt or volcanic rock.

In 2017, NASA announced the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting the TRAPPIST-1 star, nearly 40 light-years from Earth.

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