The launch of NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has been delayed for at least 48 hours because of a technical problem with the SpaceX Falcon 90 rocket that is supposed to send it into space. Here are five things to know about the exciting new mission. You can watch the launch live directly below, courtesy of NASA TV.
The timeline below outlines the launch sequence for the Falcon 9 flight with TESS, which will be injected into an elliptical transfer orbit ranging in altitude between roughly 120 miles (200 kilometers) and 168,000 miles (270,000 kilometers).
TESS is packing 16.4-megapixel imaging units that are able to simultaneously cover 24 degree segments of the sky in 13.7 day orbits before moving on to the next sky segment for the spacecraft's intense peering processes. The team is now working toward a targeted launch on Wednesday.
Over 24 months, TESS will fly in an egg-shaped orbit as far out as the moon, scanning 26 sectors to create a 360-degree view of space around it.
TESS is designed as a follow-on to the United States space agency's Kepler spacecraft, which was the first of its kind and launched in 2009. These so-called "transits" may mean that planets are in orbit around them. Using this method, Kepler has helped identify 2,600 confirmed exoplanets. The upper stage and TESS begin a coast phase scheduled to last more than 32 minutes before the second stage Merlin vacuum engine reignites.
"It was created to look at 150,000 stars in a fairly wide field of view without blinking, for four years", she told reporters on the eve of the launch. Over two years, it will use four wide-field cameras to look at the stars in large slices of sky.
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JOB: Tess will scan nearly the entire sky during its $337 million mission, staring at hundreds of thousands, even millions of small, faint red dwarf stars. In total, it should scan 85 percent of the heavens, cataloguing 500,000 stars.
And that is the task - TESS is to detect planets - more specifically exoplanets. That's why, according to the press release, it will work in collaboration with other telescopes. When the planet clears the star, the observed starlight returns to normal.
The satellite's objective is to extend the successful mission of the Kepler Space Telescope by observing stars and monitoring them for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. The new Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite could give us the best chance yet at finding them.
"Tess will tell us where and when to point", CHEOPS project scientist Kate Isaak says. Then the satellite "Characterizing ExoPlanets Satellite" - CHEOPS (satellite for the characterization of exoplanets) will go on the journey.
TESS data will also be publicly available so that anyone can download them and search for exoplanets.