{"id":235877,"date":"2026-04-25T02:04:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T07:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/tess-discovers-an-earth-sized-planet-orbiting-nearby-m-dwarf-star"},"modified":"2026-04-25T02:04:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T07:04:37","slug":"tess-discovers-an-earth-sized-planet-orbiting-nearby-m-dwarf-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/tess-discovers-an-earth-sized-planet-orbiting-nearby-m-dwarf-star","title":{"rendered":"TESS discovers an Earth-sized planet orbiting nearby M-dwarf star"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/tess-discovers-an-earth-sized-planet-orbiting-nearby-m-dwarf-star2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Using NASA\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered an extrasolar planet orbiting TOI-4616\u2014a nearby M-dwarf star. The newfound alien world, which received designation TOI-4616 b, is slightly larger than Earth. The finding was reported in a research paper published March 11 on the arXiv pre-print server.<\/p>\n<p>Launched in 2018, TESS is in the process of scanning about 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun, searching for potential transiting exoplanets. To date, it has identified more than 7,900 candidate exoplanets (TESS Objects of Interest, or TOI), of which 760 have been confirmed.<\/p>\n<p>Nearby M dwarf draws attention of planet seekers One of the stars observed by TESS is TOI-4616\u2014an M dwarf of spectral type M4 at a distance of some 91.8 light years away from Earth. TESS has identified a transit signal with a period of approximately 1.5 days in the light curve of this star. Now, follow-up observations of TOI-4616 conducted by a group of astronomers led by Francis Zong Lang of the University of Bern, Switzerland, have validated the planetary nature of this transit signal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Using NASA\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered an extrasolar planet orbiting TOI-4616\u2014a nearby M-dwarf star. The newfound alien world, which received designation TOI-4616 b, is slightly larger than Earth. The finding was reported in a research paper published March 11 on the arXiv pre-print server. Launched in 2018, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}