NASA’s TESS spacecraft deployed, starts mission to find new planets
SpaceX successfully launched and deployed NASA’s planet-hunting TESS satellite on Wednesday night, delighting scientists and space fans who anticipate the spacecraft may discover planets that could harbor life.
For a triple play, it also landed the first-stage booster at sea, the space company’s 24th such recovery.
After TESS deployed, it successfully deployed its solar arrays. It will spend the next 60 days getting to its proper orbit. NASA and SpaceX crews applauded and cheered each stage of the process, and at one hour and nine minutes after launch, announced that everything about the satellite was functioning correctly.
NASA tweeted that the deployment happened right on schedule and the solar arrays will “give the spacecraft the power it needs to search for worlds beyond our solar system.”
The launch was a precision ma-
neuver, with a brief 30-second window at 6:51 p.m. because the satellite had to get close to the moon to use its gravity in achieving its final orbit.
“A SpaceX launch with an exoplanet hunting satellite on top. Can’t miss it!” said a tweet from one space fan, @GuillemAnglada.
Another tweet, from @EmbersToAsh said, “Living in Florida is great sometimes. Just saw the [SpaceX] launch from Orlando.”
SpaceX tweeted just before 10 a.m. that all systems and weather were go for launch. The weather remained good through early afternoon and NASA also tweeted “everything is progressing smoothly for the scheduled liftoff.” At 6:40 p.m., NASA tweeted that TESS was on internal power.
After launch, there was a period of about 50 minutes before the satellite itself was deployed, so the live feeds went on longer than a typical launch.
The launch was scrubbed hours before its Monday window, when the space company decided to conduct more analysis of the guidance, navigation and control systems. Launch windows are often about two hours.
TESS launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
TESS, which stands for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is a telescope/camera that will hunt for undiscovered worlds around nearby stars, providing targets where future studies will assess their capacity to harbor life, NASA says.
With the help of a gravitational assist from the moon, the spacecraft will settle into a 13.7-day orbit around Earth. The orbit is carefully planned to account for the moon’s gravity, also.
The spacecraft will be looking for a phenomenon known as a transit, where a planet passes in front of its star, causing a periodic and regular dip in the star’s brightness. NASA’s Kepler spacecraft used the same method.
TESS is designed to concentrate on stars less than 300 light-years away, about 200,000 of them.
NASA says the satellite will begin its initial two-year mission 60 days after launch, following tests of its instruments. Four wide-field cameras will give TESS a fieldof-view that covers 85 percent of our entire sky.
It’s a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT and managed by Goddard. Orbital ATK manufactured and designed the TESS satellite.
SpaceX’s Vice President for Mission Assurance Hans Koenigsmann said previously that the second stage of the rocket carrying TESS would not be recovered.
But he said there is something new happening with the current mission — SpaceX planned to fire the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket to kick it out of orbit, so that it doesn’t become space trash circling Earth.
“Living in Florida is great sometimes. Just saw the [SpaceX] launch from Orlando.” @EmbersToAsh on Twitter