Inquiry Line (Signal only)

Live Broadcast

Out There: Meet TESS, Seeker of Alien Worlds

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Pocket
WhatsApp

Meet TESS, Seeker of Alien Worlds

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The search for cosmic real estate is about to begin anew.

No earlier than 6:32 p.m. on April 16, in NASA’s fractured parlance, a little spacecraft known as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, bristling with cameras and ambition, will ascend on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in a blaze of smoke and fire and take up a lengthy residence between the moon and the Earth.

There it will spend the next two years, at least, scanning the sky for alien worlds.

TESS is the latest effort to try to answer questions that have intrigued humans for millenniums and dominated astronomy for the last three decades: Are we alone? Are there other Earths? Evidence of even a single microbe anywhere else in the galaxy would rock science.

Continue reading the main story

Photo
A plaque with the signatures of people who worked on the TESS project. Also installed on the satellite was a memory chip that included drawings of exoplanets by schoolchildren. Credit Josh Ritchie for The New York Times

Not so long ago, astronomers didn’t know if there were planets outside our solar system or, if there were, whether they could ever be found. But starting with the 1995 discovery of a planet circling the sunlike star 51 Pegasi, there has been a revolution.

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, launched in 2009, discovered some 4,000 possible planets in one small patch of the Milky Way near the constellation Cygnus. Kepler went on to survey other star fields only briefly after its pointing system broke. After nine years in space, it’s running out of fuel.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Thanks to efforts like Kepler’s, astronomers now think there are billions of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy, which means the nearest one could be as close as 10 to 15 light-years from here.

Continue reading the main story

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Photo
George Ricker, lead scientist on the TESS project. “There are 20 million stars we can look at,” he said. Credit Josh Ritchie for The New York Times
Photo
The TESS spacecraft being moved at the Kennedy Space Center. TESS will hitch a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, NASA’s first scientific mission with Elon Musk’s company. Credit Ben Smegelsky/NASA
Photo
Work on TESS observed from below its test stand. The spacecraft has four small cameras, each with a 24-degree field of view. Credit Josh Ritchie for The New York Times
Photo
The mission’s planners say they eventually expect to catalog some 20,000 new exoplanet candidates of all shapes and sizes. Credit Josh Ritchie for The New York Times
Continue reading the main story

Sync your calendar with the solar system

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other astronomical and space event that's out of this world.

March 20 Vernal equinox

March 31 Deadline for the Google Lunar X Prize

April 1 NASA could launch the GRACE FO satellite

By Michael Roston. Produced by Britt Binler and Gray Beltran. Video by NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI).

Read the Original Article

Facebook Comments
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Pocket
WhatsApp

Never miss any important news. Subscribe to our newsletter.

Recent News

Follow Radio Biafra on Twitter

Editor's Pick