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NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TES) got off to a flying start in April 2018, as the $ 200-million satellite took over from the predecessor Kepler Space Telescope for the planet hunt .
Seven months after finding its first exoplanet, TESS discovered its first planet the size of the Earth.
"It's so exciting that TESS, which was launched about a year ago, is already changing the game in the global hunting industry," co-wrote Johanna Teske of the Department of Terrestrial. Magnetism (DTM) at Carnegie. Institution for Science, said in a statement. "The spacecraft observed the sky and we collaborated with the TESS monitoring community to identify potentially interesting targets for additional observations using telescopes and ground-based instruments."
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Unfortunately, the new world of Earth's size, known as HD 21749c, does not seem to be a candidate for living accommodation. It revolves around its star about once every eight days, which probably makes it too hot to support life. The star, HD 21749, represents about "80% of the mass of our Sun and is about 53 light-years from Earth," added researchers.
The artistic design of HD 21749c, the first Earth-sized planet discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite (TESS) satellite, and its brother, the HD 21749b, a warm world the size of the world. a size smaller than Neptune. (Credit: Robin Dienel, Courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science.)
"Measuring the exact mass and composition of such a small planet will be a challenge but an important point to compare HD 21749c to Earth," Wang said. The Carnegie PFS team continues to collect data on this object for this purpose. "
Even though the HD 21749c does not seem to be a candidate for housing life, it is hoped that TESS will find planets that can create life-friendly conditions, said Diana Dragomir, lead author of the study.
"For very close and very bright stars, we expected to find about twenty planets the size of the Earth," Dragomir said in his statement. "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. "
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The results were published in the scientific journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
A "warm world the size of a size smaller than Neptune," known as HD 21749b, which takes 36 days to orbit the HD 21749 and had already been discovered in January, was also mentioned in the study.
TESS revealed its first images in September, becoming the next-generation spacecraft looking for exoplanets, following Kepler, who discovered more than 2,600 confirmed planets in his lifetime, according to Space.com.
TESS background
NASA's director of astrophysics, Paul Hertz, said that missions such as TESS would help us determine whether we are alone – or whether we are fortunate to have "the best real estate property in the world." choice in the galaxy ".
The number of exoplanets, from all space and Earth observatories over the last two decades, stands at over 3,700, of which 4,500 on the list of competitors.
It is thought that about 50 are potentially habitable. They have the right size and good orbit of their star to support the surface waters and, at least theoretically, to support life.
Scientists speculate that the habitable zone or so-called Goldilocks – the distance from a star where it is neither too hot nor too cold to support life, but perfectly adapted to the potential of liquid water on the surface – should to be much closer to the red dwarves than it is in our own solar system. The orbits of the planets in these systems should be rather short.
NASA and others point out that TESS will not look for atmospheric or other signs of life; it can not do that.
The James Webb telescope, the successor to the next-generation Hubble Space Telescope, will remain on the job, which is a critical task.
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James Rogers of Fox News and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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