GJ 357 d

Aug. 4, 2019

NASA’s TESS mission has discovered GJ 357 d, a super-Earth planet located 31 light years away from our own solar system.

About: 

  • The super-Earth planet -- named GJ 357 d -- was discovered in early 2019 owing to NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a mission designed to comb the heavens for exoplanets. 

  • Astronomers from the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands and the University of La Laguna, both in Spain, announced the discovery of the GJ 357 system in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. 

  • They showed that the distant solar system — with a diminutive M-type dwarf sun, about one-third the size of our own sun — harbours three planets, with one of those in that system’s habitable zone: GJ 357 d. 

  • With a thick atmosphere, the planet GJ 357 d is 22% larger than the Earth and could maintain liquid water on its surface like Earth.