The new planet hunter found two possible exoplanets

TESS Mission Chief, MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager, made an exciting announcement. NASA's Exoplanets Survey Satellite (TESS) has successfully started operations and has already found two new exoplanet candidates, returning the information to Earth. Seager said on Twitter that:

"The team is excited about what TESS might discover next. We know that the planets are there, strewn with the night sky, waiting to be discovered. "

Both candidates will have to receive confirmation from astronomers, but experts already think that both are really foreign planets.

60 light years after: Pi Mensae Star

The star Pi Mensae, located 60 light-years from Earth, was announced on 19 September. The star has a planet that orbits it every 6.3 days, and it seems to be an aquatic world – boiling water, to be more precise, since the planet is very close to its star. This planet is almost twice the size of the Earth. Here is the announcement on Twitter:

«Fun Notes for @NASA_TESS 1st candidate of the planet: the star Pi Mensae is visible in the night sky, mass and radius of the planet show a density of water type (infer water / gas) and the second known planet of the system Jupiter's mass and its orbits every 5.7 years).

Planet of the Earth, 49 light-years

The second candidate is closer to our planet, 49 light years away. It is almost the size of the Earth, but the speed at which the star is spinning is enormous: in just 11 hours, it makes a complete orbit!

TESS is the successor to the former Kepler Space Telescope, which has discovered more than 2,000 confirmed exoplanets in recent years. Kepler is now low on fuel and is expected to retire in the near future. TESS will continue its work and will focus on the stars closest to us. Researchers expect the new technology to find about 20,000 more exoplanets before retiring.

Andre Blair is the editor-in-chief of Advocator.ca. He holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Toronto and a Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) from the School of Public Health's Department of Health Administration. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. André specializes in environmental health, but writes on a variety of issues.