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| This artist's rendition from NASA shows the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which is set for launch Monday on a mission to search for the nearest Earth-like planets in our cosmic neighborhood (AFP Photo/Handout) |
Tampa (AFP)
- Are we alone? NASA's new planet-hunting mission, poised to launch Monday,
aims to advance the search for extraterrestrial life by scanning the skies for
nearby, Earth-like planets.
The
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, is poised to blast off at 6:32 pm
(2232 GMT) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from a NASA launchpad at Cape
Canaveral, Florida.
At a total
cost of $337 million, the washing-machine-size spacecraft is built to search
the nearest, brightest stars for signs of periodic dimming. These so-called
"transits" may mean that planets are in orbit around them.
TESS is
expected to reveal 20,000 planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets,
NASA said.
Its
discoveries will be studied further by ground- and space-based telescopes for
signs of habitability, including a rocky terrain, a size similar to Earth, and
a distance from their sun -- neither too close nor too far -- that allows the
right temperature for liquid water.
NASA
predicts that TESS could find more than 50 Earth-sized planets and up to 500
planets less than twice the size of the Earth.
TESS will
survey far more cosmic terrain than its predecessor, NASA's Kepler Space
Telescope which launched in 2009, taking in some 85 percent of the skies.
"TESS
is equipped with four very sensitive cameras that will be able to monitor
nearly the entire sky," said George Ricker, TESS principal investigator at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
"That
is about 20 times what the Kepler mission was able to detect."
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This
graphic explains key facts about Nasa's TESS telescope as it prepares for launch
on a mission to find the nearest Earth-like planets (AFP Photo/Simon
MALFATTO)
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Kepler
vs. TESS
Kepler, the
first planet-hunting mission of its kind, "was launched to answer one
single question: How common is a planet like Earth around a star like the
Sun?" said Patricia "Padi" Boyd, director of the TESS guest
investigator program at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center.
"It
was designed 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.
"One
of the many amazing things that Kepler told us is that planets are everywhere
and there are all kinds of planets out there.
"So
TESS takes the next step. If planets are everywhere, then it is time for us to
find the planets that are closest to us orbiting bright nearby stars, because
these will be the touchstone system."
TESS and
Kepler use the same system of detecting planetary transits, or shadows cast as
they pass in front of their star.
While
Kepler confirmed some 2,300 exoplanets and thousands more potential planet
candidates, many were too distant and dim to be studied further.
With Kepler
running low on fuel and nearing the end of its life, TESS aims to pick up the
search while focusing closer, on planets dozens to hundreds of light years
away.
"TESS
is going to dramatically increase the number of planets that we have to
study," said Ricker.
"It is
going to more than double the number that have been seen and detected by
Kepler."
The first
data from TESS is expected to be made public in July, and NASA says citizen
astronomers are welcome to help study the planets for signs of possible
habitability.
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