Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

TESS

Mission Profile

TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) is NASA's planet-hunting space telescope, launched on 18 April 2018 aboard a Falcon 9 to a unique lunar resonance orbit that provides stable, long-duration viewing of virtually the entire sky. Using four wide-field cameras that together image a 24× 96 degree strip of sky, TESS monitors hundreds of thousands of nearby bright stars for the transit signatures of orbiting planets, covering the entire sky over a two-year period with repeat observations of priority targets. TESS has discovered over 6,000 exoplanet candidates and confirmed hundreds, including several potentially rocky planets in the habitable zones of nearby stars accessible for atmospheric characterization by the James Webb Space Telescope. TESS succeeded the Kepler mission by targeting nearby bright stars rather than a single distant star field, enabling ground-based follow-up of its planet candidates.