NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

Question-NASA’s planet hunting telescope Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered two new exoplanets, those are –
(a)Super earth and Hot earth.
(b)Cold earth and hot earth.
(c)Liquid earth and Super earth.
(d)Gas earth and Hot earth.
Answer-(a)
Related facts-

  • NASA’s planet hunting telescope Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered two new exoplanets i.e. Super earth(Pi Mensae c) and Hot earth(LHS 3844 b), in the solar system .
  • Both planets appear to be Earth-like and rocky, but are not suitable for habitat.

Pi Mensae c-

  • It is first planet called super-earth. It is just twice the size of earth.
  • It is close to Pi Mensae which is a bright star and around which the super earth planet orbits in 6.27 days. It is under 60 light-years from Earth.
  • It is not the first object to be found orbiting Pi Mensae. Pi Mensae b, an enormous planet with 10 times the mass of Jupiter discovered in 2001.
  • Pi Mensae b orbits the star in 2083 days.

LHS 3844 b-

  • It is a little bit smaller and categorized as Hot earth.
  • It is 1.3 times the size of earth.
  • It is under 49 light-years away from earth.
  • It orbits around LHS 3844 in every 11 hours.
  • LHS 3844 is a M dwarf star.

About TESS-

  • The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a space telescope for NASA’s Explorers program, designed to search for exoplanets using the transit method in an area 400 times larger than that covered by the Kepler mission.
  • It was launched on April 18, 2018 with the help of Falcon 9 rocket.
  • The primary mission objective for TESS is to survey the brightest stars near the Earth for transiting exoplanets over a two-year period.
  • The genesis of TESS was as early as 2006, after passing its critical design review(CDR) in 2015, production of the satellite was allowed. While Kepler had cost US$640 million at launch, TESS cost only US$200 million (plus US$87 million for launch).

References-

https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-tess-two-earth-like-exoplanets-discovered-pi-mensae-c-lhs-3844

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transiting_Exoplanet_Survey_Satellite