A new study provides a rare glimpse of conditions on the surface of a rocky planet orbiting a star beyond the Sun. The study shows that the planet's surface may resemble those of Earth's Moon or Mercury: The planet likely has little to no atmosphere and could be covered in the same cooled volcanic material found in the dark areas of the Moon's surface, called mare.
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Scientists around the world are currently combing through TESS data, choosing stars that could be promising to observe from the ground and booking time at powerful ground-based telescopes to follow up on new planet candidates. The race is on to see which of those TESS signals point to real new worlds.
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NASA's science, technology and mission management office for the exploration of exoplanets. The program's primary goals, as described in the 2014 NASA Science Plan, are to discover planets around other stars, to characterize their properties and to identify planets that could harbor life.
