2 'super-Earths' discovered near Earth

According to a report on arXiv, a team of astronomers led by PhD student Mourad Ghachoui of the University of Liège (Belgium) confirmed the existence of two 'super-Earths' thanks to TESS.

TESS is surveying some 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun in search of planets that transit their star. So far, NASA’s mission has found more than 7,200 exoplanet candidates, of which 543 have been confirmed as planets.

Ghachoui's team detected signals indicating that there was a planet passing by two M-class red dwarf stars named TOI-6002 and TOI-5713, respectively.

TOI 6002 is about 105 light years away from the solar system, with a mass of 24% of the sun. TOI 5713 is 134 light years away, with a mass of 27% of the sun. Both M-class red dwarfs have at least one planet orbiting them.

The research results recorded that the planet of star TOI 6002, TOI-6002 b, has a radius 1.65 times larger than Earth and a mass nearly 4 times larger. The planet takes 10.9 days to complete an orbit around the central star.

As for the planet TOI-5713 b of the star TOI 5713, the planet is about 77% larger than Earth and has an estimated mass of 4.3 times that of Earth. TOI-5713 b takes 10.44 days to orbit its host star.

The authors of the report classify the two newly discovered planets as 'super-Earths'. This is a group of planets larger than Earth but not quite the size of Neptune.

Could these two super planets be habitable?

Scientists have not yet determined the exact composition of the two planets, saying they could be rocky or water worlds.

The team of astronomers concluded that both TOI-6002 b and TOI-5713 b are interesting targets for future studies to understand the evolution of planets that evolved from Venus-like planets but still have the potential to harbor life.