NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, has discovered three new worlds that are among the smallest, nearest exoplanets known to date. The planets orbit a star just 73 light years away and include a small, rocky super-Earth and two sub-Neptunes — planets about half the size of our own icy giant.

The sub-Neptune furthest out from the star appears to be within a «temperate» zone, meaning that the very top of the planet’s atmosphere is within a temperature range that could support some forms of life. However, scientists say the planet’s atmosphere is likely a thick, ultradense heat trap that renders the planet’s surface too hot to host water or life.

Nevertheless, this new planetary system, which astronomers have dubbed TOI-270, is proving to have other curious qualities. For instance, all three planets appear to be relatively close in size. In contrast, our own solar system is populated with planetary extremes, from the small, rocky worlds of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, to the much more massive Jupiter and Saturn, and the more remote ice giants of Neptune and Uranus.

There’s nothing in our solar system that resembles an intermediate planet, with a size and composition somewhere in the middle of Earth and Neptune. But TOI-270 appears to host two such planets: both sub-Neptunes are smaller than our own Neptune and not much larger than the rocky planet in the system.

Astronomers believe TOI-270’s sub-Neptunes may be a «missing link» in planetary formation, as they are of an intermediate size and could help researchers determine whether small, rocky planets like Earth and more massive, icy worlds like Neptune follow the same formation path or evolve separately.

TOI-270 is an ideal system for answering such questions, because the star itself is nearby and therefore bright, and also unusually quiet. The star is an M-dwarf, a type of star that is normally extremely active, with frequent flares and solar storms. TOI-270 appears to be an older M-dwarf that has since quieted down, giving off a steady brightness, against which scientists can measure many properties of the orbiting planets, such as their mass and atmospheric composition.

Story Source: Materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Original written by Jennifer Chu. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.