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Just months after the start of its missions, NASA's brand new TESS spacecraft found two exciting exoplanet candidates. The first potential exoplanet is about twice as large as the Earth and revolves around a brilliant dwarf star, Pi Mensae, located about 60 light-years from Earth. The other is located 49 light-years from Earth and surrounds a red dwarf called LHS 3844. Both objects complete an orbit around their host stars every 6. 3 days and 11 hours, respectively.
"It's gratifying to see years of work that the engineers, scientists and support staff of the team have put into @NASA_TESS's dream to become the reality of discovered planets. This is only the beginning; we can not wait to see more. Padi Boyd, scientist at NASA, said in a statement declaration.
the @NASA_TESS The team is delighted to announce the first candidate planet of the mission – a super-Earth around the bright star Pi Mensae, located nearly 60 light-years away. The planet revolves around every 6.3 days. The discovery is being reviewed by other scientists to validate it. Stay tuned! – NASA_TESS (@NASA_TESS) September 19, 2018
TESS, abbreviation of Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is NASA's latest mission to search for planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets. Launched on April 18, the mission will spend the next two years monitoring the brightest stars nearby and looking for periodic drops in their light. These so-called soaking events, called transits, suggest that a planet is orbiting a star and can pass in front of it.
A second @NASA_TESS the candidate planet has been discovered! Slightly larger than the Earth, this planet revolves around LHS 3844, a dwarf star M located 49 light-years away, every 11 hours. This discovery is being reviewed by other scientists, and we look forward to studying this "Hot Earth". – NASA_TESS (@NASA_TESS) September 20, 2018
Researchers believe that thousands of planets are hiding outside our solar system. The predecessor of TESS, NASA's Kepler telescope, has discovered more than 2,000 confirmed exoplanets alone, while many candidates are waiting for confirmation. The new NASA spacecraft, TESS, is expected to find thousands of additional exoplanets. Few of them are potentially habitable with the ingredients needed to support life. The $ 337 million mission will see 85% of the entire sky, a field of vision containing more than 200,000 stars.
"This part of the southern hemisphere of the sky includes more than a dozen stars that we know have planets in transit based on previous studies of ground observatories" – George Ricker @NASA_TESS PI @MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research @TESSatMIT https://t.co/C3wVr5WNgI pic.twitter.com/T2GcXcc9mw– NASA_TESS (@NASA_TESS) September 17, 2018
TESS officially launched the scientific operations on July 25 and sent back its first scientific image to Earth in September. The first image in the science of light presents a detailed view of the southern sky taken with the four wide-field cameras of the spacecraft. It includes parts of a dozen constellations as well as large and small magellanic clouds, the closest galaxies to our own galaxy.
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