NASA's new planetary hunter begins work – Astronomy Now

The new NASA Space Observatory has begun searching for planets around other stars while astronomers are focusing on search-friendly worlds by tracking missions like the James Webb Space Telescope . The satellite officially embarked on a two-year scientific mission on Wednesday, about three months after taking off from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

"I am delighted that our new planet-hunting mission is ready to scour the neighborhood of our solar system for new worlds, "said Paul Hertz, director of astrophysics division of NASA." Now that we know that there are more planets than stars in our universe, I look forward to the strange and fantastic worlds we are going to discover. "

Equipped with four 16.8-megapixel science cameras, TESS will look for eye blinks.the light coming from Stars, relatively bright, when the planets pass in front of them.These observations, astronomers can determine the size of each newly discovered planet, then use other techniq such as radial velocity measurements to derive their masses.

TESS follows NASA's Kepler mission, which is approaching the end of its mission in search of planets around other stars. Kepler – NASA's first mission to search for an exoplanet – was generally looking for worlds around farther stars, resulting in 2,650 new planets confirmed beyond our solar system

The TESS mission aims to observe the stars closer to the sun. In addition, Kepler has only pointed to certain parts of the sky, while TESS is going to take a closer look.

George Ricker, who heads the TESS science team at the Kavli Institute of Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT, said the exoplanet surveyor "Scope Finder" for the Webb telescope and huge ground observatories.

"You can go out on a dark night, and you can see 6,000 or more stars in the sky at the naked eye," Ricker said. "We are going to look at each of these stars."

About 20 million stars will be visible by TESS light-sensitive cameras, including targets up to a million times lower than observable to the naked eye Ricker said. . About 200,000 of these stars are "shortlisted" by the TESS science team because of their proximity and brightness.

Each TESS camera houses four red-sensitive CCD detectors designed and developed by the Lincoln Laboratory at MIT. "TESS is a survey machine, and she's going to find the best planets for us to follow up, and among this category are these little rocky planets, transiting little red dwarf stars," said Sara Seager, deputy chief scientist of the TESS mission at MIT, in an interview before the launch of the mission.

Ricker says that it's safe. Expects TESS to find between 500 and 1000 planets that are between one and three times the size of the Earth. According to TESS, up to 20,000 planets the size of Neptune or Jupiter could be discovered, which would increase the number of known planets beyond our solar system by five or more, but it does not matter. does not expand the catalog of exoplanets.

"The fact that TESS focuses on finding systems associated with bright stars means that they will be much easier to follow," Ricker said in an interview with Spaceflight Now. "Once you have discovered that a transit system exists, it is something you will want to come back and study more and more as improved instruments, satellites and telescopes become the reference for future research. " [19659003] This is where the James Webb Space Telescope becomes a crucial tool for astronomers seeking to learn more about the nature of distant exoplanets. Scheduled for launch in early 2021, the Webb telescope, often delayed, will be able to probe the atmospheres of some of these worlds, learning their chemical composition and looking for evidence that the planets might be habitable.

The huge expandable observatory "will be able to search for characteristic material signatures in the atmospheres of these planets … and something that is potentially a biogenic signature," Ricker told Spaceflight Now. "Of course, it takes a lot of care and a lot of work." TESS can only point to these are the best targets on which you should focus with Webb. "

TESS will scan about 85% of the sky during its main mission of two years, starting with the stars in the southern sky. In 2019, the observatory will move its objective towards the northern sky

The mission will focus mainly on the M-dwarf stars, smaller and colder than the sun, and which constitute the majority of the stars of the Milky Way. . Also known as red dwarfs, the stars that are the center of TESS have not been studied in depth to determine if they host their own solar systems. Since its launch, TESS has maneuvered into a unique gravitational resonance orbit with the moon taking the spaceship. between the distances of 108,000 kilometers (67,000 miles) and 376,000 kilometers (233,000 miles) from the Earth. In this orbit, TESS loops around the Earth about every two weeks

NASA released the first test image of one The four cameras of TESS in May, showing about 200,000 stars along the Milky Way

The TESS's first series of scientific data will be connected to Earth in August, and NASA announced that astronomers would immediately begin to analyze these images. The software will help scientists sort data and detect exoplanet transit signals.

Built by Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems – formerly known as the ATB Orbital – TESS launched its thrusters several times and used a moon flyover on May 17th. to reach the final mission orbit of $ 337 million, a stable boom that requires no further rocket combustion and passes close enough to the Earth to transmit complete images of the ship's scientific cameras via a downlink in Ka band at high speed. The orbit also removes TESS from the detrimental influence of Van Allen's radiation belts.

The spacecraft, which weighed less than half a ton at launch, carries enough fuel to continue running until 20 or 30 years ago, an interview before the launch of TESS. This assumes that NASA funding and spacecraft parts remain robust.

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