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Posted By: Mona - Astronomy TESS goes planet-hunting - 04/21/18 08:26 PM
Kepler's done two missions and its data is still being analyzed. But there are other missions hunting for exoplanets, and they'll be joined by TESS, the new kid on the block. TESS is NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and it was launched in April 18.
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TESS will use a series of thruster burns to boost it into a high-Earth, highly elliptical orbit. A lunar gravity assist maneuver will allow it to reach a previously untried stable orbit with half the orbital period of the Moon and a maximum distance from Earth of about 373,000 kilometers (232,000 miles). From there, TESS will carry out a two year survey to search for planets around the brightest and closest stars in the sky.


TESS launch close up
Image Credit & Copyright: John Kraus

Description: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
Posted By: Mona - Astronomy Re: TESS goes planet-hunting - 04/22/18 09:57 PM
TESS's hunt for alien worlds.
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A new era in the search for exoplanets — and the alien life they might host—has begun. Aboard a SpaceX rocket, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched on April 18, 2018. Over the next two years, TESS will scan the 200,000 or so nearest and brightest stars to Earth for telltale dimming caused when exoplanets cross their stars’ faces.

The Kavli Foundation spoke with two scientists on the TESS mission, to get an inside look at its development and revolutionary science aim of finding the first “Earth twin” in the universe. The participants were Greg Berthiaume, Instrument Manager for the TESS mission and Diana Dragomir, Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

Here’s a roundtable discussion with 2 scientists on the TESS mission.
Posted By: Mona - Astronomy Re: TESS goes planet-hunting - 05/23/18 07:14 PM
News from NASA about TESS . . .

Last week TESS successfully completed a lunar flyby to get a gravity assist that helped it sail toward its final working orbit.

The science team snapped a two-second test exposure using one of the four TESS cameras. The image, centered on the southern constellation Centaurus, reveals more than 200,000 stars. The edge of the Coalsack Nebula is in the right upper corner and the bright star Beta Centauri is visible at the lower left edge. TESS is expected to cover more than 400 times as much sky as shown in this image with its four cameras during its initial two-year search for exoplanets. A science-quality image, also referred to as a “first light” image, is expected to be released in June.

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