NASA's Planet-Hunting Mission Has Found 5,000 Alien Worlds In Four Years
Alien worlds are now being discovered by space agencies at an astounding pace. In fact, NASA's planet-hunting mission has found 5,000 potential alien worlds in less than four years.
Yep, you read that right. The American space agency's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) exoplanet hunter has made considerable strides. Now, there are about 5,000 TESS Objects of Interest or TOIs that are exoplanet candidates with signals that are of interest to astronomers.?
The characteristics of TOIs are studied by astronomers to to get a better picture of what TESS may have seen.
5,000 possible alien worlds
Led by MIT scientists, TESS had found "just over 2,400 TOIs... this time last year", Michelle Kunimoto from MIT said in a statement.
Out of these 5,000, at least 176 TOIs have been confirmed as planets since the launch of TESS in April 2018. There's a time lag in between the moment TOIs are identified and confirmed as planets. TESS' predecessor, the Kepler space telescope identified over 2,000 planet candidates that haven't confirmed as planets till date.
Also read:?Space Giants In 2021: Hubble's Pics Of Our Solar System's Biggest Planets
TESS was launched as a two-year-long mission but now has been extended until 2025, with NASA and MIT hoping to find more exoplanets in space. One of the key findings by TESS was a planet where a year lasts for just 16 Earth hours. For each observation, TESS observes a patch of sky to find planets near a raging star.
Also read:?NASA Discovers 301 Exoplanets In One Go With Help From Artificial Intelligence
What do you think about such great improvements made in remote space exploration over the last five years? Let us know in the comments below.?For more in the world of?technology?and?science, keep reading?Indiatimes.com.
References
Bartels, M. (2022b, January 26). NASA planet-hunting mission finds 5,000 possible alien worlds in less than 4 years. Space.Com.?
