NASA says its planet-hunting mission discovered the candidates after launching in 2018.
NASA announced that more than 1,000 exoplanet candidates discovered by its TESS mission since its 2018 launch have been confirmed. It introduced a thread exploring some of those worlds beyond our solar system.
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NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has crossed a major line in its long-running planet hunt. In an Oct. 8 update, the NASA Exoplanet Archive said 70 newly added planets pushed the number discovered with TESS data past 1,000.
The archive's current statistics list 1,008 confirmed planets discovered by TESS and 6,445 confirmed exoplanets overall. For this tally, a confirmed TESS planet is one published in refereed astronomical literature.
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That distinction matters because a candidate is not yet a confirmed planet. The archive lists 8,148 TESS project candidates integrated into its database. It separately lists 4,823 TESS project candidates that had not yet been classified as either confirmed planets or false positives. The archive describes project candidates as transit-like events that appear astrophysical in origin, a pool that can still include events later identified as false positives.
Launched in April 2018, TESS surveys bright nearby stars for tiny dips in starlight. Those dips occur when an orbiting planet passes in front of its star, an event called a transit.
Transits remain central to the mission, but they are not its only route to a planet. NASA says TESS recently identified a planet through microlensing, which occurs when a nearer object magnifies the light of a more distant star.
The mission still has thousands of candidates awaiting follow-up. NASA says many of the confirmed worlds could become targets for closer study by the James Webb and Nancy Grace Roman space telescopes.
@NASAUniverseOur planet-hunting TESS mission has reached an exciting milestone: over 1,000 of the exoplanet candidates it has discovered since its 2018 launch have been confirmed! Let’s explore some of these intriguing worlds beyond our solar system … 🧵@NASAUniverseOur planet-hunting TESS mission has reached an exciting milestone: over 1,000 of the exoplanet candidates it has discovered since its 2018 launch have been confirmed! Let’s explore some of these intriguing worlds beyond our solar system … 🧵@NASAUniverseOur planet-hunting TESS mission has reached an exciting milestone: over 1,000 of the exoplanet candidates it has discovered since its 2018 launch have been confirmed! Let’s explore some of these intriguing worlds beyond our solar system … 🧵@NASAUniverseOur planet-hunting TESS mission has reached an exciting milestone: over 1,000 of the exoplanet candidates it has discovered since its 2018 launch have been confirmed! Let’s explore some of these intriguing worlds beyond our solar system … 🧵
