An independent researcher, Pavel Rabtsevich, based in Tarragona, Spain, claims to have spotted what he describes as a ‘candidate planet’ in NASA’s public archives. To achieve this, he relied on Claude Code, an AI agent, and his method intrigued the US space agency enough for it to modify its observation program.
Presenting his findings on Reddit, the scientist states he spent weeks examining data from the TESS space telescope. By taking a closer look at the star TIC 4206066, he noticed that it was, in his words, ‘crossed by a shadow’ for two hours, every 3.18 days. Such regularity is typically a sign of the transit of an exoplanet—a planet located outside our Solar System—between Earth and its star.
Predicting the transit using AI
NASA’s telescope pointed at this region of the sky three times, in 2018, 2020, and 2025. To verify that it was indeed a planetary transit, Pavel Rabtsevich used AI to predict the exact moment the planet was supposed to pass in front of its star. He provided the tool with data from two of the three observations.
According to the researcher, the AI then succeeded in predicting the precise moment of the third transit. This result would indicate that the phenomenon is extremely regular and meets the criteria required to identify the transit of an exoplanet in front of its star. The reasoning therefore relies on the ability to anticipate an observation already made, not on direct confirmation of the planet’s existence.
A study closely followed by NASA
The feat would be unprecedented: until now, an independent scientist had not managed to rediscover a star in the public archives of a NASA satellite. With the development of AI, however, this type of situation could recur in the future, according to the scenario outlined in the source article.
NASA took the discovery seriously and decided to revise TESS’s observation schedule. The telescope is to point at star TIC 4206066 between October 31 and November 26, in order to verify the researcher’s predictions and determine if the candidate planet truly exists.
