Galactic explorer Tess will seek new worlds
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, 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.
It will be the most extensive survey of its kind from orbit, with Tess, a galactic scout, combing the 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 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.
NASA’s astrophysics director, Paul Hertz, said missions like Tess will 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 successful Kepler Space Telescope, the pioneer of planetary census.
Kepler’s fuel tank is running 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.
The exoplanet count, from all observatories in space and on Earth over the last couple of decades, stands at more than 3,700 confirmed with 4,500 on the strong contender list.
About 50 are thought to be potentially habitable. They have the right size and the right orbit of their star to support surface water and, at least theoretically, to support life.
Most of the Kepler-identified planets are so far away that it would take monstersize telescopes to examine them more. So astronomers want to focus on stars that are brighter and closer to home — close enough for NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to scrutinize the atmospheres of planets lurking in their sun’s shadows.
MIT’s Sara Seager, an astrophysicist who has dedicated her life to finding another Earth, imagines water worlds waiting to be explored. Perhaps hot super Earths with lakes of liquid lava.
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. Liftoff is Monday night. Its eventual orbit of Earth will stretch all the way to the orbit of the moon.
Tess’ four cameras will zoom in on red dwarf stars in our cosmic backyard — an average 10 times closer than the Kepler-observed stars. The majority of stars in the Tess survey will be 300 light-years to 500 lightyears away, according to Ricker. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles.