NASA discovers planet located in habitable zone

The US space agency (NASA) announced the discovery of a planet with good chances of being habitable. TOI 700e was located by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey (TESS) satellite in an area classified as the “habitable zone”, a term used for space regions that have the conditions to have liquid water in their crust. The discovery was announced this week by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory researcher Emily Gilbert, during the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, in Seattle, United States. Using data from TESS, scientists identified the planet as “an Earth-sized world orbiting within the habitable zone of its star.” According to NASA, TOI 700e is 95% the size of Earth; it is probably rocky; and it takes 28 days to orbit the “little, cool dwarf star” TOI 700, located at the center of the system, about 100 light-years away, in the southern constellation of Dorado. NASA had already discovered, in 2020, the planet TOI 700d, the size of Earth, in the same space region – the latter, like the “TOI 700e”, is also located in the habitable zone. It was discovered in 2020 and is approximately the size of Earth. According to NASA, it took an additional year of observations for TESS to conclude that there is a second planet in this same habitable zone.

Agência Brasil