NASA's James Webb Telescope finds first exoplanet almost exactly the same size as Earth
The rocky exoplanet is about 41 light-years away
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NASA's James Webb Telescope hit another milestone on Wednesday, identifying its first exoplanet 41 light-years away that is almost exactly the same size as Earth.
Formally dubbed LHS 475 b, the rocky planet is just 1% smaller than Earth's diameter.
"Webb is bringing us closer and closer to a new understanding of Earth-like worlds outside our solar system, and the mission is only just getting started," Mark Clampin, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement.
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NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite first hinted at the planet's existence, which was confirmed by Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph.
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While LHS 475 b is almost the same size as Earth, the planet is a few hundred degrees warmer and the makeup of its atmosphere is unclear.
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Additional observations are set to take place this summer to try to figure out the atmosphere's composition, if it has one at all.
"There are some terrestrial-type atmospheres that we can rule out," Jacob Lustig-Yaeger, a doctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory explained on Wednesday. "It can’t have a thick methane-dominated atmosphere, similar to that of Saturn’s moon Titan."
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The $10 billion Webb Telescope transmitted its first image of the early universe last July.
Since then, it has captured the Stephan's Quintet, a grouping of five galaxies 290 million light-years away; the Carina Nebula, a stellar nursery with brand new stars that were previously hidden; and galaxies with stellar bars, which are elongated features of stars that stretch to a galaxy's outer disks.
Fox News' Julia Musto contributed to this report.