As Earth slowly falls apart under the weight of human abuse, Mars seems to be the popular alternative.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is scouting locations for human habitats, people have started designing Martian living spaces, and NASA managed to successfully touch down on the red planet not too long ago with their InSight lander.

Mars isn’t under threat as a potential Plan B (or C), but scientists are excited about a new planet that is ‘nearby’.

100 light-years, to be precise, which isn’t exactly around the corner, but in terms of the universe as we understand it, isn’t at the outer reaches of what we can observe.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered another Earth-sized, potentially habitable planet orbiting around a star located within conditions that could allow for the presence of water on the planet.

Per TechCrunch:

Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope scientists confirmed the find, called TOI 700 d, according to a statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

The new planet joins other Earth-sized planets discovered by NASA including several in the TRAPPIST-1 system and other worlds discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, JPL said.

TESS was designed specifically to hunt for Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby stars. According to CNN, this particular find is significant because it’s one of the few planets outside of our solar system that could potentially support life.

TOI 700 d is the outermost of the three planets, completing a single orbit around the star every 37 Earth days. From its smaller star, the planet receives about 86% of the energy that our sun supplies the Earth.

The planet is thought to be tidally locked, meaning one side is always in daylight.

Earth completes an orbit around the sun every 365 1/4 days. That means that a year on TOI 700 d is only 37 Earth days.

If all that science jargon is giving you a headache, this video breaks things down:

The star closest to TOI 700 d was initially estimated to be much hotter than it is, which is why the planet was initially dismissed. When researchers uncovered the error, however, everything changed.

The next step is finding out whether or not the planet has an atmosphere and what it’s made of.

Exciting times.

[source:techcrunch&cnn]