New planet that may be habitable is discovered by NASA

NASA (the US space agency) has announced the discovery of a planet similar in size to Earth and which may be habitable. Called TOI 700 e, the planet orbits a zone where liquid water is possible, crucial for the existence of life as we know it.

At 95% the size of Earth, the ‘e’ in the planet’s name is a differentiation from three other companions previously found by the agency in the same system, the TOI planets 700 b, c, d — the latter also in a habitable zone. But the discovery of the new star required an additional year of observation.

“This is one of the few systems with multiple small, habitable-zone planets that we know of,” said Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, who led the work.

According to Gilbert, the observation of the new planet paves the way for other discoveries.

“Planet ‘e’ is about 10% smaller than ‘d’. [satélite] TESS help us find smaller and smaller worlds”, he says. The TESS (exoplanet research satellite, in free translation) is in its second year of mission.

TOI 700 is the name of a dwarf star located in the southern constellation of Dorado, 100 light years away from Earth. Planet ‘e’ has an orbit of 28 days and is probably rocky.

Planet ‘d’, also in a habitable zone, is the size of Earth and orbits in 37 days. TOI 700 c is 2.5 times larger than Earth and completes an orbit every 16 days. The ‘b’, in turn, is 90% the size of our planet and an orbit of 10 days.

According to NASA, these planets, including the newly discovered one, probably rotate only once per orbit. Thus, one side is always facing the star.

The ‘e’ is in the optimistic habitable zone, defined by scientists as the range of distances from a star where liquid water could be present at some point in the planet’s history.