The NASA Planet-Hunting TESS spacecraft is now operational

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After its successful launch in April, NASA's satellite mission for the investigation of exoplanet satellites (TESS) began collecting data. It took a little longer than expected for the spacecraft to be fully tested and ready for action, but the agency says it began data collection on July 27th. However, we will not get the first set of comments for several weeks.

When the TESS was launched, NASA stated that it would take 60 days to test the probe before it could start functioning. However, this self-imposed deadline came and went. NASA has announced that TESS will be ready by the end of July, a little over 90 days after its launch. He made the deadline, but only a little.

TESS is a spiritual successor to Kepler, the space observatory responsible for detecting most of the currently known exoplanets. Like Kepler, TESS uses the transit method to detect exoplanets. He observes distant stars for small drops in brightness, which could indicate that a planet has passed in front of them. These data must be validated by repeated observations, and a human usually needs to verify the discovery. Although, Google has worked with NASA on AI who can do most of the work.

The first order of the day for TESS is to scan a parcel of sky in the southern hemisphere covering 2,300 degrees from the south ecliptic pole to near the plane of the ecliptic. Basically, he looks for potential exoplanets in a strip of sky that stretches from the far south to near the equator. Finally, TESS should be able to observe about 85% of the sky during its planned two-year mission. The first year will cover the southern hemisphere, then move to the northern half of the sky.

TESS will be able to scan more sky than Kepler, but he will not look at objects as far. Kepler has a maximum range of about 3,000 light-years, but TESS will limit observations to a distance of 300 light-years. NASA hopes that TESS will be able to find more super-terrestrial planets with its powerful array of cameras. These objects are more massive than the Earth, but they are not giants. He will be able to determine the mass, size, density and orbital characteristics of these planets.

The first data download from the Transiting Exoplanet study satellite is scheduled for August 8. The team may need to make adjustments to TESS after seeing the first results, but great things are ahead for this mission.