ORLANDO – Two new planets have been discovered by the NASA new telescope.
A planet-hunting orbital telescope designed to detect worlds beyond oursolar system discovered two distant planets this week five months after itslaunch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, officials said on Thursday.
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, better known as TESS, made anearly discovery of “super-Earth” and “hot Earth” planets in solar systemsat least 49 light-years away, marking the satellite’s first discovery sinceits April launch. TESS is on a two-year, $337 million mission to expandastronomers’ known catalog of so-called exoplanets, worlds circling distantstars.
While the two planets are too hot to support life, TESS Deputy ScienceDirector Sara Seager expects many more such discoveries.