NASA's extraterrestrial life: TESS telescope finds "super-terrestrial"

And the space agency said its Exoplanets in Transit (TESS) satellite could find more thousands in the next few years.

She made an early discovery of a super-terrestrial planet and an Earth-hot planet in solar systems located at least 60 and 49 light-years away respectively.

This is the first major discovery since its launch of Cape Canaveral, Florida in April, Thursday.

It is believed that the new "super-Earth", named Pi Menase c, is 60 light-years away and revolves around its sun every 6.3 days.

The project could have a solid surface or be a water world, according to TESS scientist Martin Spill.

The researchers also discovered a "Hot Earth" named LHS 3844B, located 49 light-years away and orbits the sun every 11 hours.

TESS is doing a $ 337 million mission over two years to expand the known catalog of astronomers, called exoplanets, which are worlds surrounding distant stars.

Sara Seager, Deputy Scientific Director of TESS, said: "We will have to wait to see what TESS discovers.

"We know that the planets are there, strewn over the night sky, waiting to be found.

TESS is designed to take advantage of the work of its predecessor, the Kepler Space Telescope, which has discovered most of the approximately 3,700 exoplanets documented over the past 20 years and run out of fuel.

NASA hopes to locate thousands of previously unknown worlds, perhaps hundreds of them, the size of the Earth or the "super-Earth" – no more than twice the size of our planet.

These are the most likely to have rocky surfaces or oceans and are therefore considered the best candidates for life to evolve.

The scientists said they hoped TESS would help document at least 100 additional rock exoplanets for further study in what has become one of the new areas of exploration of astronomy.