A transit occurs when a planet passes in front of its star from the observer’s perspective, causing a periodic and regular dip in the star’s brightness.

TESS will be watching for phenomena called transits. TESS will use four unique wide-field cameras to map 13 sectors encompassing the southern sky during its first year of observations and 13 sectors of the northern sky during the second year, altogether covering 85 per cent of the sky. “One critical piece for the science return of TESS is the high data rate associated with its orbit,” said George Ricker, TESS principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US.įor this two-year survey mission, scientists divided the sky into 26 sectors. Over the course of several weeks, TESS will use six thruster burns to travel in a series of progressively elongated orbits to reach the Moon, which will provide a gravitational assist so that TESS can transfer into its 13.7-day final science orbit around Earth.Īfter approximately 60 days of check-out and instrument testing, the spacecraft will begin its work. “With missions like the James Webb Space Telescope to help us study the details of these planets, we are ever the closer to discovering whether we are alone in the universe,” said Zurbuchen. “We are thrilled TESS is on its way to help us discover worlds we have yet to imagine, worlds that could possibly be habitable, or harbour life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The twin solar arrays that will power the spacecraft were successfully deployed soon after.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is expected to find thousands of new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, lifted off at 4:21 am IST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA’s latest planet hunting satellite was successfully launched on Thursday on the first-of-its-kind mission to find new worlds beyond our solar system and identify the ones that could support alien life.

Spacex launches nasa planet-hunting s