(More Than) One Thousand TESS Planets!
There are now 1,000 confirmed exoplanets using TESS data, but there are almost 5,000 more TESS candidate planets in the discovery database ExoFOP, waiting to be confirmed. ExoFOP is the Exoplanet Follow-up Observing Program hosted by NExScI.
Data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and many more, can be found in the NASA Exoplanet Archive at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI). NExScI is operated within IPAC at Caltech for NASA and JPL.
This week's 70 new planets have unlocked a new exoplanet milestone: 1,000 planets have been discovered with data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)! The new additions also bring the archive's total confirmed planet count to 6,445.
TESS launched in April 2018 to survey the sky in search of transiting exoplanets around the brightest stars near Earth. The Medium-Explorer-class mission has uncovered alien worlds that may help us better understand how planets form while adding to the growing list of targets for further study by newer missions, including JWST. Learn more about the spacecraft and its discoveries on NASA's TESS Mission page.
This week's milestone is a proud moment for the TESS mission and the exoplanet science community, and there is more to come! There are currently 4,823 TESS Project Candidates waiting to be confirmed, and data for more than 8,000 candidates have been uploaded to our sister archive, the Exoplanet Follow-up Observing Program (ExoFOP).
The following sky maps were created based on TESS observations from the first 96 sectors. Each pink dot is a TESS confirmed planet. The oval map (top) is an all-sky image and the two circles are northern (left) and southern (right) hemispheres.
(Click an image to view a larger version.)
Image credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Nicole Schanche (University of Maryland College Park)
- Date: October 9th, 2026
- Category: IPAC News
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