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NASA astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet with the Tess space telescope.
The name is a bit unwieldy, but hope is high: TOI 700 e is as big as our planet. It is still unclear whether the exoplanet has an atmosphere similar to our earth’s atmosphere. NASA astronomers were able to spot the planet thanks to the Tess telescope. According to the first data, the planet is rocky and orbits a small star, that is, a sun.
“This is one of the few systems known to us with multiple small planets in habitable zones. This makes the TOI 700 system an exciting prospect for further tracking,” says Nasa expert Emily Gilbert to “Bild”.
The planet is 100 light years away from us. A light year is the equivalent of 9.46 trillion kilometers. So far too far away for us humans. But researchers are still working on developing spacecraft that can travel such distances.
Hundreds of billions of exoplanets suspected in our galaxy
At the same time, the James Webb Space Telescope was able to discover its first exoplanet. The existence of the exoplanet LHS 475 had previously been indicated, and now it has been confirmed for the first time with the help of the telescope, the US space agency Nasa said. LHS 475 is almost exactly the same diameter as our Earth and about 41 light-years away. It is still unclear whether the exoplanet has an atmosphere similar to our earth’s atmosphere.
For a long time, astronomers only knew about the planets orbiting our sun. The first exoplanets – celestial bodies that usually orbit a star outside our solar system – were only confirmed in the early 1990s. Nasa experts assume that there are hundreds of billions of exoplanets in our galaxy, the Milky Way. (lrc/SDA)