VERDICT: TRUE **Wolf Cukier — a 17-year-old high-schooler interning at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center — did discover a new planet (TOI 1338 b), confirmed by NASA's own government publications and the peer-reviewed journal paper on which he is a co-author.** **Claim-linked findings** 1. **He was a teenaged NASA intern and he found the planet.** NASA's official press release states that in 2019, after finishing his junior year at Scarsdale High School (New York), Wolf Cukier joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center as a summer intern and was tasked with examining TESS brightness data. "About three days into my internship, I saw a signal from a system called TOI 1338. At first I thought it was a stellar eclipse, but the timing was wrong. It turned out to be a planet." The result — TOI 1338 b, TESS's first circumbinary planet (a world orbiting two stars), ~6.9× Earth's size, 1,300 light-years away in Pictor — was announced Jan. 6, 2020 at the 235th American Astronomical Society meeting. ([NASA — "NASA's TESS Mission Uncovers Its 1st World With Two Stars"](https://www.nasa.gov/universe/nasas-tess-mission-uncovers-its-1st-world-with-two-stars/)) 2. **NASA itself attributes the discovery to the intern by name.** A NASA Science feature describes "the recent discovery of a new planet orbiting a pair of 'eclipsing binary' stars led by summer intern Wolf Cukier and his mentor, Veselin Kostov, using data from NASA's TESS mission." ([NASA Science — "Citizen Scientists Supercharged Data from NASA's TESS Mission..."](https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/astrophysics/citizen-scientists-supercharged-the-data-from-nasa-s-tess-mission-and-helped-a-planet-come-to-light/)) 3. **The find is backed by a peer-reviewed journal paper.** The discovery paper is "TOI-1338: TESS' First Transiting Circumbinary Planet," published in *The Astronomical Journal* (DOI 10.3847/1538-3881/ab8a48). NASA's Technical Reports Server records it as a journal "Reprint" and lists the author affiliation **"Wolf Cukier (Scarsdale High School)"** — confirming the teenager's credited role. The abstract reports "the detection of the first circumbinary planet found by TESS," with a planet radius of ~6.9 R⊕ and a 95.2-day orbit. ([NASA NTRS record for the paper](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20205004013); [arXiv/Cornell abstract, Kostov et al. 2020](https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.07783)) 4. **The planet is officially catalogued by NASA.** NASA's Exoplanet Catalog entry for TOI-1338 b lists it as a confirmed Neptune-like exoplanet orbiting an F-type star with a discovery date of **2020**, discovered via the transit method. ([NASA Exoplanet Catalog — TOI-1338 b](https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/toi-1338-b/)) **Minor caveat (does not change the verdict):** The planet's confirmation was a team effort — Cukier spotted the initial signal in TESS data flagged by the Planet Hunters TESS citizen-science project, and the discovery was then verified and published by an international team (Kostov et al.) with Cukier as a co-author. NASA's own communications nevertheless credit the intern directly, so the viral claim's core assertion — a teenaged NASA intern discovered a new planet — is accurate. **Primary sources used (all opened):** - https://www.nasa.gov/universe/nasas-tess-mission-uncovers-its-1st-world-with-two-stars/ (NASA, government) - https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/astrophysics/citizen-scientists-supercharged-the-data-from-nasa-s-tess-mission-and-helped-a-planet-come-to-light/ (NASA, government) - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20205004013 (NASA Technical Reports Server, government) - https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.07783 (Cornell University; the peer-reviewed paper, *AJ* DOI 10.3847/1538-3881/ab8a48) - https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/toi-1338-b/ (NASA, government)