New Earth-sized Exoplanet Discovered 70 Light Years Away by NASA's Kepler Spacecraft

Astronomers using NASA's Kepler spacecraft and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) recently discovered K2-415bm, a new Earth-sized exoplanet, Phys.org reports.

This newly identified exoplanet is around 70 light years away from the sun and has at least three times the mass of Earth. On Feb. 1, experts disclosed the discovery in an article uploaded on the arXiv pre-print server.

Kepler Spacecraft & TESS

Launched in 2009, Kepler has been a successful planet-hunting telescope, discovering over 2,600 exoplanets to date. After one of its two reaction wheels failed in 2013, the mission was repurposed as K2 to conduct high-precision photometry of chosen ecliptic fields. The restored Kepler spacecraft spotted hundreds of new extrasolar worlds up to November 2018.

On the other hand, TESS is currently surveying around 200,000 of the brightest stars close to the sun to look for transiting exoplanets. More than 6,100 potential exoplanet candidates have been found by TESS, of which roughly 3,000 have been confirmed. In 2020, TESS discovered TOI 700 d, the first Earth-size habitable-zone planet found by the survey satellite.

New Exoplanet

The observations revealed that K2-415b has a radius of about 1.015 Earth radii and a mass of at least 3.0 Earth masses. Every 4.018 days, the planet orbits its parent star, K2-415, at a distance of around 0.027 AU. The equilibrium temperature of K2-415b is estimated to be about 400 K.

K2-415 has the spectral type M5V and an effective temperature of 3,173 K. The star has a radius of around 0.2 solar radii and a mass of about 0.16 solar masses.

With the discovery of this new exoplanet, K2-415 becomes the Kepler and K2 spacecraft' closest planet-hosting star to Earth, as well as one of the stars with the lowest mass hosting an Earth-like planet.

K2-close 415b's closeness to Earth and moderate transit depth make it a prospective target for future atmospheric characterization investigations of Earth-like planets, particularly those with low temperatures.

How They Did It

Assume you have a powerful telescope capable of photographing distant stars and planets. The experts used this type of telescope to explore a planet that orbits a small red star named K2-415. Astronomers discovered that this planet is roughly the same size as Earth and orbits its star every four days.

They conducted additional tests to ensure that what they saw was indeed a planet. They studied the light from the star and the planet for a considerable time to ensure that it was not anything else (like another star or a black hole) that was making it appear like there was a planet there. They also took special photos of the planet and its star to prove its presence.

The scientists also used another advanced method to calculate the planet's mass, discovering that it is slightly larger than Earth. This is exciting since it is extremely rare to find an Earth-sized planet orbiting a star as tiny and cold as K2-415. Scientists want to learn more about this planet by studying it in the future.

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