New planet discovered – Named TOI 700 d. NASA has announced that its planet-hunter Tess satellite has discovered a new planet the size of Earth and at a distance neither too close nor too far from its star may have water present.
The star TOI 700 is small, about 40% of the size and mass of our Sun, with a surface temperature less than half. The Tess satellite discovered three planets around this star, named TOI 700 b, c, and d. Only the "d" is in the so-called "habitable" area.
It is almost the size of the Earth (20% more) and circles its star in 37 days. It receives 86% of the energy supplied by the Sun to the Earth. It remains to be seen what it is made of. The researchers generated models based on the size and type of the star, in order to predict the composition of the atmosphere and the surface temperature.
Multiple astronomers will now observe the planet with other instruments, obtaining new data that may correspond to one of the models predicted by NASA.
The system was nearly missed by Tess, but several amateur astronomers, including a high school student by the name of Alton Spencer, praised by NASA, discovered an initial classification error. This helped to understand the true nature of the system. The discovery was then confirmed by the Spitzer space telescope.
A few other planets of a similar type have been discovered before, notably by the old Kepler space telescope, but this is the first by Tess, launched in 2018. "
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