TESS Telescope Successfully Finds 5,000 Exoplanets, Research Will Continue Until Year End

JAKARTA - The catalog of planet candidates discovered with NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) recently passed 5,000 TOI, or TESS Objects of Interest.

This is an impressive new milestone for TESS. Launched in 2018, the telescope is working hard with researchers from various institutions to find indications of planets outside the Solar System.

Many of the objects TESS identifies are referred to as potential exoplanets, or TOIs because they require multiple observations to confirm that the signals given out are in fact exoplanets.

Currently, of the more than 5,000 candidates found, 176 have been confirmed as exoplanets. The recent pool of planetary candidates that led to the discovery of more than 5,000 TESS, which was discovered as part of the Faint Star Search, was led by MIT researcher Michelle Kunimoto.

“This time last year, TESS has found more than 2,400 TOI. Today, TESS has more than doubled that number, a huge testament to the mission and all teams exploring the data for a new planet. I'm excited to see thousands more in the years to come," said Kunimoto.

In the coming months, astronomers around the world will study each of these TOIs to determine if they are habitable planets, and the catalog of confirmed exoplanets from the TESS mission (175 as of December 20) will keep growing.

TESS has helped discover an incredible variety of exoplanets, from potentially habitable worlds to planets that shouldn't be near the Solar System, to monstrous little planets where a year lasts eight hours.

TESS's initial mission ran from 2018 to 2020, but was so successful that the mission was extended from 2020 to 2022, so while there's still time, researchers are hoping to find more interesting planets.

Now, in an expanded mission, TESS is observing the Northern Hemisphere and the ecliptic plane, including regions of the sky previously observed by the Kepler and K2 missions.

“With data from the first year of extended missions, we have uncovered dozens of additional candidates for TOI discovered during the main mission. I'm excited to see how many multi-planetary systems we can discover during the remainder of the extended mission and in the years to come with TESS," said TOI Manager Katharine Hesse.