NASA has discovered a new planet—a super-Earth 137 light-years away. Dubbed TOI-715b, it’s one-and-a-half times larger than Earth, reports the podcast Studio 2 on WHYY.

Scientists think it could support life since it lies in a habitable zone, just the right distance from its star, to possibly have liquid water.

Eric Jensen, Professor of Astronomy at Swarthmore College, talked with Studio 2 hosts Avi Wolfman-Arent and Cherri Gregg about the process of discovering other planets and determining if life could exist there.

Astronomers have now discovered close to 6,000 planets, Jensen said.

“So this planet was discovered by a very small NASA mission called TESS, and its only job is to look at the whole sky and to try and find planets,” Jensen said.

TESS is good at finding planets but not so good at providing detailed information about their properties and atmosphere.

He said this Super Earth will be a promising target for the James Webb telescope. The Webb can look at planets as they pass in front of their star and detect how the light is changed. That determines whether the planet has an atmosphere and possibly what the atmosphere is made of.

Find out more about detailed studies of atmospheres on other planets at WHYY.