NASA’s Tess spacecraft embarks on quest to find new planets
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s Tess spacecraft embarked Wednesday on a quest to find new worlds around neighbouring stars that could support life.
Tess rode a SpaceX Falcon rocket through the evening sky, aiming for an orbit stretching all the way to the moon.
The satellite — the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or Tess — will scan almost the entire sky for at least two years, staring at the closest, brightest stars in an effort to find and identify any planets around them. Hundreds of thousands of stars will be scrutinized, with the expectation that thousands of exoplanets — planets outside our own solar system — will be revealed right in our cosmic backyard.
Rocky and icy planets, hot gas giants and, possibly, water worlds. Super-Earths between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. Maybe even an Earth twin.