New Earth-Sized Planet Discovered by NASA

NASA has discovered a planet outside of our solar system that is roughly the size of Earth and may have volcanoes on it.

Astronomers discovered the planet, which they are dubbing LP 791-18 d, using data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope.

The co-author of the study that appeared in the academic journal Nature, Björn Benneke, stated: “The planet is tidally locked, which implies that the same side always faces its star.”

“The day side would probably be too hot for liquid water to exist on the surface. But the amount of volcanic activity we suspect occurs all over the planet could sustain an atmosphere, which may allow water to condense on the night side.”

According to NASA, the planet is located around 90 light years from Earth and revolves around a red dwarf, a dying star that is nearing the end of its existence.

In the southern constellation Crater, there is a star called LP 791-18 d.

Whether tectonic or volcanic activity is required for life is a major subject in astrobiology, the discipline that generally examines the origins of life on Earth and beyond, according to study scientist Jessie Christiansen.

“In addition to potentially providing an atmosphere, these processes could churn up materials that would otherwise sink down and get trapped in the crust, including those we think are important for life, like carbon.”

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer project that is administered by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and is directed and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

One of the final data points the satellite, Spitzer, gathered before being discontinued in January 2020, was observations of the system.

The public may access the whole corpus of scientific data that Spitzer gathered throughout the course of its existence through the Spitzer data archive, which is kept at the Infrared Science Archive at IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, California.