Hyderabad: Amid plethora of researches to find out existence of life outside our solar system, NASA has discovered a potentially habitable "Super Earth", 31 light years away from us. One light-year is equal to 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers.
The Super Earth named "GJ 357 d" was discovered using data collected by NASA's planet-hunting TESS space telescope, which looks for dips in the brightness of stars, indicating planets passing in front of them.
In February this year, TESS' cameras caught a star named "GJ 357" dimming slightly every 3.9 days.
Investigations eventually revealed not one, but three exoplanets orbiting the star.
GJ 357 d, the third and farthest from its star, sits just within the outer edge of its habitable zone. It receives about the same amount as stellar energy as Mars does from our Sun.
According to a study, GJ 357 d weighs at least 6.1 times Earth's mass and orbits its star every 55.7 days.
Though the exact size and composition of it is yet to be ascertained, but it is believed that it must be about one or two times bigger than Earth's size.
The discovery team was led by Rafael Luque, a doctoral student at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) on Tenerife.
What is TESS
Launched in April last year, TESS or otherwise known as Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has been scanning the sky, staring at the closest, brightest stars in an effort to find and identify any planets around them.
It has scrutinised hundreds of thousands of stars with the expectation that thousands of exoplanets - planets outside our own solar system - will be revealed right in our cosmic backyard.
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