{"id":18353,"date":"2018-09-21T22:18:13","date_gmt":"2018-09-21T14:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/tess-probe-finds-first-potential-planets\/"},"modified":"2018-09-21T22:18:13","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T14:18:13","slug":"tess-probe-finds-first-potential-planets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/tess-probe-finds-first-potential-planets\/","title":{"rendered":"TESS probe finds first potential planets"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"TESS
An artist\u2019s conception shows NASA\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, with an alien sun and planet in the background. (NASA \/ GSFC Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Astronomers on the team for NASA\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission, or TESS, are reporting their first potential planet discoveries, just days after the spacecraft\u2019s first science image was unveiled.<\/p>\n

The first reported candidate planet was detected orbiting a star known as Pi Mensae, a sunlike yellow dwarf star nearly 60 light-years from Earth that was already known to harbor a world that\u2019s more than 10 times as massive as Jupiter.<\/p>\n

The newly detected prospect is closer to its parent star in the southern constellation Mensa, making a complete orbit every 6.3 Earth days.<\/p>\n

In a paper published on the ArXiv pre-print website and submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the team\u2019s scientists say Pi Mensae c appears to be about twice as wide as Earth and 4.5 times as massive. Its density is estimated as roughly equal to water\u2019s density, which suggests the planet is a super-Earth that \u201cmay have held on to a significant atmosphere,\u201d the scientists say.<\/p>\n

The second candidate planet orbits a red dwarf star known as LHS 3844, 49 light-years away in the constellation Indus. LHS 3844 b is thought to be a \u201chot Earth,\u201d with a diameter about a third wider than Earth\u2019s. It swings around its sun every 11 hours.<\/p>\n