TESS already in space. It will soon begin searching for new worlds
NASA’s TESS satellite has begun a mission to search for extrasolar planets. The launch took place two days late. Scientists expect to locate thousands of previously unknown exoplanets orbiting nearby stars with this mission.
The launch was originally scheduled to take place on the night of April 16-17. However, SpaceX, on whichoThe rocket cruise was to launch a satellite, postponed the launch due to the need to analyze the rocket’s navigational control – GNS (guidance navigation control) system, ktory is responsible for putting TESS into the correct orbit.
The launch took place last night. Falcon 9 successfully launched and resultsoTESS’s pole into space. This was the first high-priority NASA mission carried out by the private company SpaceX.
Glohe primary goal of the TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission is to search for and study exoplanets. The telescope is expected to focus on the search for extrasolar planets wokoł stars relatively close to the Sun. Researchers hope that someore of them will be close enough to Earth to be studied in depth by available instruments.
– We are excited that TESS is well on its way to pomoc us to discover worlds thatorych we can’t even imagine yet, worlds thatore could be habitable,” said NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen. – Missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope will help us learn about and analyze the detailedoły of these planets. We are getting closer to discovering whether we are alone in the universe – added.
It will be a few more weeks before TESS settles into its target highly elliptical Earth orbit with a planetary orbital period of 13.7 days. In doing so, it will take advantage of the Moon’s gravitational assistance. Next, the telescope’s instruments will be tested. All this will take about 60 days. After this time, TESS will begin its search for extrasolar planets.
As part of this two-year research mission, scientists have divided the sky into 26 sectorsow. TESS will use four powerful wide-angle cameras to search 13 sectors of theoIn covering the southern sky during the first year of observations. Next year, the 13th sector will come under the magnifying glassoin poof the northern sky. In total, the observations will cover about 85 percent of the. skies.
TESS will search for stars thanks to the so-called. transit method. It will look for a periodic decrease in the brightness of the 200,000 brightest stars near the Sun. A transit occurs when a planet passes in front of its star from an observer’s perspective, causing a periodic and regular decrease in the star’s brightness.
More than 78 percent. of the approximately 3,700 confirmed extrasolar planets found using this method. More than 2,600 have been located thanks to the Kepler Space Telescope. However, the equipment is ending its mission due to lack of fuel.
Most of the stars found by the Kepler telescope are between 300 and 3,000 light years from Earth. TESS will focus on our nearer vicinity. His target will be stars between 30 and 300 light-years away.
– TESS will provide us with data to study for decades to come. This is the beginning of a new era of exoplanet research – Stephen Rinehart, a scientist working on the TESS mission with NASA, said’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
