SpaceX launch NASA’s planet hunting satellite TESS
SpaceX has launched NASA’s planet-hunting satellite TESS into outer space Wednesday evening from Cape Canaveral.
TESS — short for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite — will spend two years searching for planets near bright, nearby stars. The satellite was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
TESS, will study vastly more stars across 85 percent of the sky in a bid to pinpoint thousands of new planets with the emphasis on Earth-size or slightly larger.
Successful deployment of @NASA_TESS to a highly elliptical orbit confirmed. pic.twitter.com/y9CS82cj9N
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 18, 2018
“People have always wanted to know are we alone in the universe,” said Paul Hertz, director of astrophysics at NASA Headquarters. “Up until 20 years ago, we didn’t know of any planets beyond our own solar system. Now, we know that for every star in the sky that you look at, there’s probably a family of planets around it.
The Falcon 9, with TESS nestled in a protective nose cone, blasted off from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:51 p.m. EDT (GMT-4), climbing away to the east through a cloudless sky. The launching came two days late to carry out additional guidance, navigation and control analysis. After boosting the rocket out of the dense lower atmosphere, the first stage fell away and flew back to a landing on the deck of an off-shore drone ship. The launching marked SpaceX’s eighth so far this year and the 53rd of a Falcon 9 overall. The company’s landing record now stands at 24 successful booster recoveries, 12 on land and 12 on the deck of a ship.
Researchers expect that TESS will find around 20,000 planets to target for future study.
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