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Video Source: SciNews

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9, successfully launched into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida on April 18, 2018.

TESS will spend two years surveying the sky, initially around 200,000 stars, monitoring for drops in brightness from transiting planets, to track down candidates for follow-up investigation. TESS PI George Ricker, Senior Research Scientist at MIT Kavli Institute, estimates that somewhere between 500 to 1,000 Earth-sized and super-Earth-sized exoplanets could be detected out of an overall excess of 20,000 exoplanets.

The information TESS provides could then be further analyzed by current instruments and future missions like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), to shed more light on the characteristics of the discovered planets. Eventually, combined with additional surveys from upcoming exoplanet missions, we will have a greater understanding of what lies beyond our solar system and how much of it is potentially habitable.

The Astrobiology Magazine Guide to TESS provides a detailed overview of the mission and its trajectory.

Further information on TESS and its relationship to astrobiology, along with links to TESS resources, is available at the Astrobiology at NASA website.