NASA TESS Uncovers 10,091 Exoplanet Candidates as 8-Year Archive Yields First Microlensing Planet
Updated
Updated · WION · Jul 1
NASA TESS Uncovers 10,091 Exoplanet Candidates as 8-Year Archive Yields First Microlensing Planet
3 articles · Updated · WION · Jul 1
Summary
10,091 previously missed exoplanet candidates emerged from TESS’s eight-year archive after researchers reapplied AI tools, adding to nearly 8,000 candidates already identified by the mission.
Gaia23bra b — a 1.63-Jupiter-mass world — also became the first planet TESS detected through gravitational microlensing rather than its usual transit method, showing the telescope can capture planets its original design would miss.
Nearly 900 TESS candidates have already been confirmed, and a separate AI study validated more than 100 archive planets, including 31 not previously catalogued.
Roman, NASA’s next major space telescope due in autumn 2026, is expected to find about 1,000 microlensing planets, with the TESS result offering a template for spotting similar signals.
TESS is still surveying new sky sectors every 27 days, leaving researchers with a growing archive they say could take decades to fully mine.
How will TESS’s surprise discovery reshape the exoplanet hunt before Roman's launch next month?
What other cosmic secrets are hiding in TESS's data, now that it found a planet it wasn't designed to see?
How does this distant super-Jupiter challenge our theories on where giant planets can form across the galaxy?
Breaking New Ground: TESS’s First Gravitational Microlensing Planet Discovery with Gaia23bra b
Overview
On July 1, 2026, NASA's TESS made a landmark discovery by finding its first planet, Gaia23bra b, using gravitational microlensing. This event marks a pivotal moment for TESS, a mission originally designed to detect planets through the transit method. The detection of Gaia23bra b shows TESS's unexpected versatility and its ability to uncover planetary systems in parts of the galaxy that were previously hard to reach. This discovery highlights how different exoplanet detection methods, like transits and microlensing, work together to give scientists a fuller picture of distant worlds.