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Originally scheduled for a two-year mission, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) takes flight in an elliptical 13.7-day cycle around the Earth. It's a unique and extreme orbit that has never been used before, varying as close as 67,000 miles and as far as 232,000 miles from its home planet. According to Space.com, the stable orbit will allow TESS to stay in space for decades without the need for trajectory corrections.
And this gives the satellite a magical perspective.
Equipped with four wide-angle cameras, TESS observe 85 percent of the surrounding sky as it searches for exoplanets. The satellite's instruments will map 26 different "sectors" of the sky over a two-year period. And with the first amazing image arriving in May, and a recent series of commissioning tests completed, the future of the satellite looks promising. Here is everything you need to know about this wonderful machine.
TESS begins to search for exoplanets
We are in operation! As early as Friday, July 27, NASA announced that its exoplanet hunting satellite was fully operational and had begun to search the skies for distant planets – and perhaps, perhaps, to spy on signs of life outside our galaxy. that our new planet hunter mission is ready to start scouring the neighborhood of our solar system for new worlds, "said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division at headquarters in Washington. "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."
With the healthy satellite and all TESS revival process systems in May, with the goal of starting science by the end of July. For a satellite, it means more than a shower and a cup of coffee: this involves a period of commissioning tests and adjustments before scientists can really rely on the data sent back to Earth. According to NASA, "every new mission goes through a period of commissioning tests and adjustments before starting scientific operations. This serves to test the performance of the spacecraft and its instruments and determines if changes need to be made before the mission begins to observe. "
NASA's newest planetary fighter, @NASA_TESS the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is currently undergoing a series of commissioning tests before starting to search for planets https: // t.co/kYnDwjhpKS pic.twitter.com/rodPbAknUQ
– NASA_TESS (@NASA_TESS) July 11, 2018
In May, while the trade was preparing in final orbit, NASA's latest satellite danced a great little jig. "In one of the last passes, TESS performed a" break dance "to evaluate all the sources of stray light in order to characterize the performance of the camera for the duration of the mission " How does it
Inside the exoplanet mission
What is it that TESS? main purpose of this satellite is the search for exoplanets, planets located outside our solar system. How to track down these little dots on the black ink of deep space? TESS will look for a phenomenon called "transit", which occurs when a planet passes in front of its star. The resulting decrease in luminosity can be observed and measured by spectroscopy, giving astronomers a better idea of the size and composition of the planet.
"TESS opens a door for a new kind of study," said Stephen Rinehart at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "We will be able to study individual planets and start talking about the differences between planets.The targets found by TESS will be fantastic research topics for decades to come."
TESS replaces the aging Kepler telescope, which runs on fumes and will soon be unable to maneuver. Unlike TESS, Kepler is in a solar orbit and can make observations in one direction. "TESS will launch a larger network than ever before for the enigmatic worlds whose properties can be explored by NASA's future James Webb Space Telescope and other missions," said Paul Hertz of NASA. but he was still observing the same area of space, and most of the planets were more than a thousand light-years away. TESS will set its sights on other nearby stars within 300 light-years of Earth.
The discoveries made by TESS could lead to further studies with the upcoming $ 8.8 billion James Webb telescope planned for 2020. We will be able to look for telltale signs in the atmospheres of these planets that could tell us what the planets are made of, and maybe even if they have the types of gases in their atmospheres that, on Earth, are an indication of life, "Hertz said at a conference
TESS can even moonlight sometimes to investigate other cosmic phenomena that he is encountering in addition to exoplanets.Researchers will be invited to use the spaceship as part of a search for more information. a "guest investigator" program, said NASA
"I do not think we know all that TESS will accomplish," added Rinehart. "For me, the most exciting part of any mission is the unexpected result, the one that pers none has seen it happen. "
NASA's Exoplanet Investigation Satellite was launched on Monday, April 16th aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral. , Florida. The launch of the next-generation planet-hunting satellite was broadcast live on the NASA website.
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