The Space Environment of the Habitable Zone Exoplanet TOI 700 d

We investigate the space environment conditions near the Earth-size planet TOI 700 d using a set of numerical models for the stellar corona and1 wind, the planetary magnetosphere, and1 the planetary ionosphere. We drive our simulations using a scaled-down stellar input and1 a scaled-up solar input in order to obtain two independent solutions. We find that for the particular parameters used in our study, the stellar wind conditions near the planet are not very extreme—slightly stronger than that near the Earth in terms of the stellar wind ram pressure and1 the intensity of the interplanetary magnetic field. Thus, the space environment near TOI 700 d may not be extremely harmful to the planetary atmosphere, assuming the planet resembles the Earth. Nevertheless, we stress that the stellar input parameters and1 the actual planetary parameters are unconstrained, and1 different parameters may result in a much greater effect on the atmosphere of TOI 700 d. Finally, we compare our results to solar wind measurements in the solar system and1 stress that modest stellar wind conditions may not guarantee atmospheric retention of exoplanets.