{"id":2030,"date":"2018-04-19T05:50:21","date_gmt":"2018-04-19T09:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/?p=2030"},"modified":"2018-04-19T06:07:01","modified_gmt":"2018-04-19T10:07:01","slug":"nasa-planet-hunter-has-launched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/nasa-planet-hunter-has-launched\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA \u2018Planet Hunter\u2019 has launched"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_2031\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2031\" style=\"width: 434px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2031\" src=\"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/spacex_tess_launch_planet-hunter_cover.jpg\" alt=\"NASA \u2018Planet Hunter\u2019 has launched\" width=\"434\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/spacex_tess_launch_planet-hunter_cover.jpg 434w, https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/spacex_tess_launch_planet-hunter_cover-300x207.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 434px) 100vw, 434px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2031\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA\u2019s next planet-hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), successfully launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 on April 18, 2018. TESS will search for new worlds outside our solar system for further study. \/ Credits: NASA Television<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>NASA\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (<u>TESS<\/u>) launched yesterday on a first-of-its-kind mission to find worlds beyond our solar system, including some that could support life. TESS, expected to find thousands of new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, lifted off at 6:51 p.m. EDT Wednesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. At 7:53 p.m., the twin solar arrays that will power the spacecraft successfully deployed. According to today\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/tess-transiting-exoplanet-survey-satellite\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">release<\/a> from our favorite space agency:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWe are thrilled TESS is on its way to help us discover worlds we have yet to imagine, worlds that could possibly be habitable, or harbor life,\u201d said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate in Washington<\/em>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cWith missions like the James Webb Space Telescope to help us study the details of these planets, we are ever the closer to discovering whether we are alone in the universe.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Over the course of several weeks, TESS will use six thruster burns to travel in a series of progressively elongated orbits to reach the Moon, which will provide a gravitational assist so that TESS can transfer into its 13.7-day final science orbit around Earth. After approximately 60 days of check-out and instrument testing, the spacecraft will begin its work.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cOne critical piece for the science return of TESS is the high data rate associated with its orbit,\u201d said George Ricker, TESS principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s (MIT) Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research in Cambridge. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cEach time the spacecraft passes close to Earth, it will transmit full-frame images taken with the cameras. That\u2019s one of the unique things TESS brings that was not possible before.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For this two-year survey mission, scientists divided the sky into 26 sectors. TESS will use four unique wide-field cameras to map 13 sectors encompassing the southern sky during its first year of observations and 13 sectors of the northern sky during the second year, altogether covering 85 percent of the sky.<\/p>\n<p>TESS will be watching for phenomena called\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/thumbnails\/image\/transiting-exoplanet-with-brightness-graph-anim.gif\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transits<\/a>. A transit occurs when a planet passes in front of its star from the observer\u2019s perspective, causing a periodic and regular dip in the star\u2019s brightness. More than 78 percent of the approximately 3,700 confirmed exoplanets have been found using transits.<\/p>\n<p>NASA\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/mission_pages\/kepler\/main\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kepler<\/a>\u00a0spacecraft found more than 2,600 exoplanets, most orbiting faint stars between 300 and 3,000 light-years from Earth, using this same method of watching for transits. TESS will focus on stars between 30 and 300 light-years away and 30 to 100 times brighter than Kepler\u2019s targets.<\/p>\n<p>The brightness of these target stars will allow researchers to use\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov\/educators\/hera\/spectroscopy\/what_is_spectroscopy.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">spectroscopy<\/a>, the study of the absorption and emission of light, to determine a planet\u2019s mass, density and atmospheric composition. Water, and other key molecules, in its atmosphere can give us hints about a planets\u2019 capacity to harbor life.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cThe targets TESS finds are going to be fantastic subjects for research for decades to come,\u201d said Stephen Rinehart, TESS project scientist at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. \u201cIt\u2019s the beginning of a new<\/em> era of exoplanet research.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Through the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov\/docs\/tess\/proposing-investigations.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TESS Guest Investigator Program<\/a>, the worldwide scientific community will be able to conduct research beyond TESS\u2019s core mission in areas ranging from exoplanet characterization to stellar astrophysics, distant galaxies and solar system science.<\/p>\n<p>TESS is a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/astrophysics\/programs\/astrophysics-explorers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NASA Astrophysics Explorer<\/a>\u00a0mission led and operated by MIT and managed by Goddard. George Ricker, of MIT\u2019s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, serves as principal investigator for the mission. TESS\u2019s four wide-field cameras were developed by MIT\u2019s Lincoln Laboratory.<\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; vertical-align: baseline; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: center;\"><strong>Also see:\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/nasa-moonwalker-and-pioneer-astronaut-john-young-dead-at-87\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-size: 13.0pt; font-family: 'Arial',sans-serif; color: #23527c; background: #F8F8F8; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;\">NASA: Moonwalker and pioneer astronaut John Young, dead at 87<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>~ Posted by:<\/em>\u00a0<em>Richard Webster, Ace News Today\u00a0 \u00a0\/\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0Connect with Richard on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/richard.webster.31\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>Facebook<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rdwebster\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>Twitter<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched yesterday on a first-of-its-kind mission to find worlds beyond our solar system, including some that could support life. TESS, expected to find thousands [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,547,26,462,11],"tags":[1286,1285,36,1284,145,39,1283,1282],"class_list":["post-2030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-events","category-international","category-science","category-top-news","tag-are-we-alone","tag-exoplanets","tag-nasa","tag-planet-hunter","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-tess","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2030"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2034,"href":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030\/revisions\/2034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acenewstoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}