Launch of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a space telescope intended to search for extrasolar planets using the transit method. It is part of NASA's long-running "Explorer" program which has been going since 1958 and involves working with a variety of other institutions and businesses. In this case, the $200m project is led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with seed funding from Google.
Equipped with four wide-angle telescopes and charge-coupled device (CCD) detectors totalling 192 megapixels, TESS conducts a two-year all-sky survey focussed on nearby G- and K-type stars with apparent magnitudes brighter than 12. Around 500,000 are studied – over triple the 156,000 that Kepler was designed to observe – including the 1,000 closest red dwarfs. The region of sky covered is also 400 times bigger.
Several thousand Earth-sized and larger exoplanets are identified, adding to the already huge tally from Kepler. Many of these candidate worlds are later investigated by the James Webb Telescope and other future missions which enable more detailed analysis of their masses, sizes, densities, orbits and atmospheres. In this same year, Europe launches its own similar mission – the Cheops satellite (see below).
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