The Tess spacecraft
Tess spacecraft lifts off from Cape Canaveral on Monday
is go for launch on Monday, set to travel atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit, where it will be on the prowl for planets around the closest, brightest stars.
CAPE CANAVERAL — Look up at the sky tonight. Every star you see — plus hundreds of thousands, even millions more — will come under the intense stare of NASA’s newest planet hunter.
Set to lift off Monday night, the Tess spacecraft will prowl for planets around the closest, brightest stars. These newfound worlds eventually will become prime targets for future telescopes looking to tease out any signs of life.
Fairly small as spacecraft go, the 800-pound, 4-foot-by-5-foot Tess will ride a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, with liftoff scheduled for 6:32 p.m. Its eventual orbit of Earth will stretch all the way to the orbit of the moon.
It will be the most extensive survey of its kind from orbit, with Tess, a galactic scout, combing the interstellar neighborhood as never before.
“We’re going to look at every single one of those stars,” said the mission’s chief scientist, George Ricker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Scientists expect Tess to find thousands of exoplanets — the term for planets outside our solar system.
“All astronomers for centuries to come are really going to focus on these objects,” Ricker said. “This is really a mission for the ages.”
NASA’s astrophysics director, Paul Hertz, said missions like Tess’s will help answer whether we’re alone — or just lucky enough to have “the best prime real estate in the galaxy.”
Tess — short for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite — is the heir apparent to the wildly successful Kepler Space Telescope, the pioneer of planetary census. Kepler’s fuel tank is running precariously low after nine years of flight, and NASA expects it to shut down within several months.
Still on the lookout from on high, Kepler alone has discovered more than 2,600 confirmed exoplanets. Even more candidates await confirmation.
The exoplanet count, from all observatories in space and on Earth over the past couple of decades, stands at more than