New giant planet found in our nearest star system - and it could support life

Thrilled NASA scientists say they have discovered a giant new planet in the nearest star system to Earth that could have moons capable of supporting life.

The planet has been found orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauristellar system by astronomers using NASA’s hi-tech James Webb Space Telescope - and it's located just four lightyears away from Earth. The discovery follows years of scientific focus on Alpha Centauri, which has three stars and is thought to foster some of the best conditions for extra-terrestrial life. Researchers say the new observations from James Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) provide some of the strongest evidence to date of a gas giant orbiting the system's largest star, Alpha Centauri A.

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If confirmed, the new planet would be the closest planet to Earth that orbits in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star - but because it's gas giant (like Saturn and Jupiter), scientists say it would not be able to support life as we know it.

However, it could have a number of moons that are habitable. The similarities between the exoplanet's star and our Sun makes has singled it out as particularly promising object of future study, along with its relative closeness to Earth.

The planet was detected just once, in August 2024, but has since evaded the gaze of astronomers.

They hope to get another, sharper look when a new NASA telescope, the Grace Roman Space Telescope, begins operating in 2027.

Charles Beichman, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech’s IPAC astronomy centre, said: “With this system being so close to us, any exoplanets found would offer our best opportunity to collect data on planetary systems other than our own.

“Yet, these are incredibly challenging observations to make, even with the world’s most powerful space telescope, because these stars are so bright, close, and move across the sky quickly,”.

“Webb was designed and optimised to find the most distant galaxies in the universe. The operations team at the Space Telescope Science Institute had to come up with a custom observing sequence just for this target, and their extra effort paid off spectacularly.”

It comes after a planet with'striking' similarities to Jupiter was spotted roughly 400 light years away from Earth.

The gaseous planet, named TOI-4465 b, is located around 400 light-years from Earth and is around the same size as Jupiter, but with a much smaller orbit.

A global team of 24 observers from Britain, the US, Japan, New Zealand, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Austria contributed data, with 21 being amateur stargazers.