NASA News: Space Agency Launches Search for Alien Planets

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) began searching for extraterrestrial worlds

TESS will send data to Earth next month, with new observations arriving every 13.5 days after that for two years.

Discover thousands of new planets and peer into new worlds for extraterrestrial life.

"I am delighted that our planet hunter is ready to start combing the backyard of our solar system for new worlds," Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division NASA, said in the statement.

"With perhaps more planets than stars in our universe, I look forward to the weird and fantastic worlds we are going to discover."

TESS was launched on April 18 in orbit around the Earth and then underwent a test period for s & # 39; ensure that the instrument was ready for use.

He sent a test image to his manipulators in May, showing 200,000 individual stars, many of which could be accompanied by at least one planet.

"TESS is NASA's next step in the search for outer planets our solar system, known as the exoplanets, including those that could support life," said the space agency .

"The mission should catalog thousands of candidate planets and dramatically increase the current number of known exoplanets."

TESS follows in the footsteps of NASA's iconic Kepler telescope, which during two missions has identified 2,650 confirmed exoplanets, according to the space agency