NASA’s planet hunter Tess satellite launched from Florida
FLORIDA, U.S. - In a bid to find thousands of new worlds beyond our Solar System, NASA’s Tess satellite commenced a new era in planet-hunting, lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) rose off the pad atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 6:51 p.m. EDT (2251 GMT) and deploying into Earth orbit 49 minutes later.
The satellite will hunt for alien worlds around stars in the sun's neighborhood and will survey a great swathe of stars to eventually compile a catalogue that other telescopes can then focus in on for more detailed analysis.
It is also tasked with catching the dips in brightness that occur when orbiting planets traverse their faces.
George Ricker, the mission's principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which leads the project, explained, "Tess is equipped with four very sensitive cameras that will enable it to monitor nearly the entire sky. The types of planets that Tess will detect are revealed by a process called a transit. We can see the shadow, effectively, of the planet as it passes in front of its host star."
He said, "TESS is going to dramatically increase the number of planets that we have to study. It's going to more than double the number that have been seen and detected by Kepler.”
NASA's groundbreaking Kepler space telescope launched in 2009 and has spotted 2,650 confirmed exoplanets to date —about 70 percent of all the worlds known beyond our solar system.
TESS mission investigators revealed that its strategy is a wide-field survey and its cameras will scan big strips of the sky over 27-day periods, taking in 85 percent of the heavens in two years.
MIT co-worker Jennifer Burt explained, "Over those first two years, which is the nominal mission for Tess, we're expecting to add thousands of planets; something like 2,000-3,000 planets that are certainly below the size of Jupiter, and most of them below the size of Neptune. So, the kind that have the potential for being the terrestrial-type worlds that we're most interested in.”
Meanwhile, Tess deputy science director, Sara Seager, from MIT explained, "Think of it as a phone book; you'll be able to look up the ones that interest you. But it's not just quantity; it's quality as well - because the planets we do find will be bright enough and close enough to Earth that we really can do follow-up measurements with them."
Meanwhile, Ariel's principal investigator Giovanna Tinetti from University College London, U.K. noted, "Tess will be extremely important for us. In particular, it is expected that many super-Earths will be discovered around very bright stars by Tess, and it's clear these will be absolutely great targets for Ariel.”
According to NASA officials, the TESS mission is capped at $200 million, not including launch costs, which reportedly added another $87 million.