WASHINGTON: A second rocky planet the size of Earth that is located in a star's habitable zone has been found by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. The range of distances from a star where liquid surface water may have existed at some point in a planet's history is referred to as the habitable zone. The name of the recently found planet is TOI 700 e. It is one of the very few known systems having numerous, tiny planets in the habitable zone.
The TESS mission first spotted the TOI 700 system in 2020. It is a 100-light-year distant object in the southern constellation Dorado. Three planets in the system have been named TOI 700 b, c, and d by the team lead by Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The innermost planet, TOI 700 b, is nearly 90% the size of Earth and revolves around the star once every ten days. Contrarily, TOI 700 c orbits every 16 days and is more than 2.5 times as massive as Earth.
The Earth-sized, habitable-zone planet d, which is orbiting the sun every 37 days, was found thanks to earlier TESS investigations. However, it took researchers another year of TESS observations to find TOI 700 e. This recently discovered planet, which lies between planets c and d in the so-called hopeful habitable zone, is about 10% smaller than planet d and orbits its star in 28 days. The range of distances from a star where liquid surface water might have existed at some point in a planet's history is known as the optimistic habitable zone. To either side of the conservative habitable zone—the region where scientists believe liquid water might last for the majority of the planet's lifetime—lies this region.
The TOI 700 system is therefore a promising option for further investigation. Planet e is around 10% smaller than planet d, therefore the system also demonstrates how more TESS observations help in the discovery of ever-smaller worlds, according to Gilbert. Additionally, the current discovery suggests that future research into the TOI 700 system and other comparable systems may provide additional findings.
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