The first habitable-zone, Earth-sized planet discovered with exoplanet survey spacecraft

TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, was launched in 2018 with the goal of discovering small planets around the Sun's nearest neighbors, stars bright enough to allow for follow-up characterizations of their planets' masses and atmospheres. TESS has so far discovered seventeen small planets around eleven nearby stars that are M dwarfs--stars that are smaller than the Sun (less than about 60% of the Sun's mass) and cooler (surface temperatures less than about 3900 kelvin). In a series ...