North Star A multinational team of researchers led by experts from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and The University of New Mexico identified a new, temperate sub-Neptune-sized exoplanet with a 24-day orbital period circling a nearby M dwarf star. Because of the planet's thick atmosphere, small star, and how quickly the system is travelling away from Earth, the recent discovery provides fascinating research options, according to researchers. Called TOI-1231 b, the exoplanet was discovered using photometric data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and confirmed with observations made with the Planet Finder Spectrograph (PFS) on the Magellan Clay telescope at Chile's Las Campanas Observatory.