Updates Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

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[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpViVEO-ymc"]Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)[/ame]

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, is a small mission to be launched aboard a Pegasus XL in 2017. The mission was selected by NASA on April 5, 2013. As seen in the animation posted above, it will provide a two year all-sky survey of exoplanets in our galaxy. The spacecraft will only be able to observe planets around closer and more luminous stars, ones with apparent magnitudes brighter than 12. Unlike the Kepler mission, TESS will not be able to discover small planets (<1 Earth radius) and ones further out, objects that could be located inside the habitable zone of a larger star. Each of its four wide-angle telescopes view 23 by 23 degree portions of the sky, combining to see 90 degree sectors at once, from the celestial equator to a pole. The northern hemisphere will be studied in 13 sectors for 27 days each then TESS will rotate to observe the southern hemisphere for the second year of its mission.

The small spacecraft will be placed into a high Earth orbit with an opportunity to transmit data to Earth for three hours every 13 days at perigee. This gives it two chances to downlink data during observations of each of the 26 sectors. The satellite will also aid the future James Webb Space Telescope mission, providing candidates for the infrared observatory to look at in the northern and southern poles where TESS observations overlap for a year each.

Massachusettes Institute of Technology article
Orbital Sciences Corporation article
On Wikipedia

 

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NASA: "NASA’s TESS Mission Cleared for Next Development Phase"

NASA has officially confirmed the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, clearing it to move forward into the development phase. This marks a significant step for the TESS mission, which would search the entire sky for planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets.

Designed as the first all-sky survey, TESS would spend two years of an overall three-year funded science mission searching both hemispheres of the sky for nearby exoplanets. “This is an incredibly exciting time for the search of planets outside our solar system,” said Mark Sistilli, the TESS program executive from NASA Headquarters, Washington. “We got the green light to start building what is going to be a spacecraft that could change what we think we know about exoplanets.”

“During its first two years in orbit, the TESS spacecraft will concentrate its gaze on several hundred thousand specially chosen stars, looking for small dips in their light caused by orbiting planets passing between their host star and us,” said TESS Principal Investigator George Ricker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the third year, ground-based astronomical observatories would continue monitoring exoplanets identified earlier by the TESS spacecraft.

TESS is expected to find more than 5,000 exoplanet candidates, including 50 Earth-sized planets. It will also find a wide array of exoplanet types, ranging from small, rocky planets to gas giants. Some of these planets could be the right sizes, and orbit at the correct distances from their stars, to potentially support life.

“The most exciting part of the search for planets outside our solar system is the identification of ‘earthlike’ planets with rocky surfaces and liquid water as well as temperatures and atmospheric constituents that appear hospitable to life,” said TESS Project Manager Jeff Volosin at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Although these planets are small and harder to detect from so far away, this is exactly the type of world that the TESS mission will focus on identifying.”

Now that NASA has confirmed TESS, the next step is the Critical Design Review in 2015. This would clear the mission to build the necessary flight hardware for launch.

“After spending the past year building the team and honing the design, it is incredibly exciting to be approved to move forward toward implementing NASA’s newest exoplanet hunting mission,”Volosin said.

TESS is designed to complement several other critical missions in the search for life on other planets. Once TESS finds nearby exoplanets to study and determines their sizes, ground-based observatories and other NASA missions, like the James Webb Space Telescope, would make follow-up observations on the most promising candidates to determine their density and other key properties. By figuring out a planet’s characteristics, like its atmospheric conditions, scientists could determine whether the targeted planet has a habitable environment.

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Some updates:

Last year, the cameras on TESS were determined to have a focus issue. However, NASA eventually determined to launch anyway because it won't have a large enough impact on the mission. In January, NASA certified the Falcon 9 FT to launch medium risk (Category 2) science missions like TESS. Finally, TESS has recently arrived at Kennedy Space Center for a launch no earlier than April 16.

 

[boogabooga]

Wow, looks like a really interesting mission. Seems not to be getting very much attention, though.

I find the "upgrade" from Pegasus XL to Falcon 9 interesting. Did TESS get heavier or Falcon 9 that much cheaper?

 

[Nicholas Kang]

Launching in 1 week!

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AIbD2WxyN8"]The Unique Orbit of NASA’s Newest Planet Hunter - YouTube[/ame]

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite - TESS - will fly in an orbit that completes two circuits around Earth every time the Moon orbits once. This special orbit will allow TESS’s cameras to monitor each patch of sky continuously for nearly a month at a time. To get into this orbit, TESS will make a series of loops culminating in a lunar gravity assist, which will give it the final push it needs. TESS will reach its orbit about 60 days after launch.

This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12884

Music: "Drive to Succeed" from Killer Tracks

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Bonus for Orbinauts!

I have created a few scenarios for this 2:1 P2 lunar resonant orbit in Orbiter. Enjoy!

(I hope this is the right orbit anyway. I am not yet an expert in this field called astrodynamics. :lol: Still a long way to go.)

 

[Nicholas Kang]

Launching tomorrow! (Today for US and Europe.)

SpaceX is targeting launch of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) on Monday, April 16 from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The 30-second launch window opens at 6:32 p.m. EDT, or 22:32 UTC. TESS will be deployed into a highly elliptical orbit approximately 48 minutes after launch. A 30-second backup launch window opens on Tuesday, April 17 at 6:13 p.m. EDT, or 22:13 UTC.

Following stage separation, SpaceX will attempt to land Falcon 9’s first stage on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

Live broadcast:

Pre-launch News Conference:

Science Briefing:

 

[Marijn]

This is an exciting mission. I will stay up for this.

 

[boogabooga]

Going live.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Good launch and landing. If it were archery, the booster would have scored a 9-ring on the landing. ^_^

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Stage 1 landed!

 

[PhantomCruiser]

X marks the spot!

 

[BrianJ]

Yeah!
Payload deployed.
Good luck TESS :thumbup:

 

[IronRain]

Launch video + landing!

 

[BrianJ]

We had clear video of the 2nd stage engine and payload during coast in complete darkness. They must have a light for each camera. Cool

 

[MaverickSawyer]

The gravity assist has been completed successfully! Next stop, mission orbit.

 

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Some interesting information about the processor:

The CPU Shack: "PowerPC Processor for TESS Planet Hunter"

The spacecraft's processor is relatively advanced and can process raw camera data before transmitting, but not radiation hardened. It also has 192GB of flash storage, a lot compared to other missions.

CPUs used in various missions: http://www.cpushack.com/space-craft-cpu.html

 

[Nicholas Kang]

Success! In lunar resonant orbit!

[ame="https://twitter.com/nasa_tess/status/1002603655722397696"]NASA_TESS on Twitter: ".@NASA_TESS Mission Update: The Period Adjust Maneuver (PAM) was completed successfully on May 30th. The burn was confirmed as nominal. No trajectory adjustment maneuver will be required. Success! #TESS is in its final lunar resonant orbit!"[/ame]

 

[mahdavi3d]

nasa.gov : NASA’s TESS Spacecraft Continues Testing Prior to First Observations

{...}
After a successful launch on April 18, 2018, NASA’s newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is currently undergoing a series of commissioning tests before it begins searching for planets. The TESS team has reported that the spacecraft and cameras are in good health, and the spacecraft has successfully reached its final science orbit. The team continues to conduct tests in order to optimize spacecraft performance with a goal of beginning science at the end of July.

Every new mission goes through a commissioning period of testing and adjustments before beginning science operations. This serves to test how the spacecraft and its instruments are performing and determines whether any changes need to be made before the mission starts observations.
{...}

 

[Nicholas Kang]

In operation!

[ame="https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1022982492763119618"]NASA on Twitter: "It’s official! Our newest planet-hunter satellite, @NASA_TESS, started operations this week to find worlds beyond our solar system, including some that could support life. Find out when the first series of data will be transmitted back to Earth: https://t.co/1ij5c8kBXj… https://t.co/qHi9Vou7pc"[/ame]

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has started its search for planets around nearby stars, officially beginning science operations on July 25, 2018. TESS is expected to transmit its first series of science data back to Earth in August, and thereafter periodically every 13.5 days, once per orbit, as the spacecraft makes it closest approach to Earth. The TESS Science Team will begin searching the data for new planets immediately after the first series arrives.

Source: NASA

 

[mahdavi3d]

phys.org : NASA's Planet-hunting TESS catches a comet before starting science

Before NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) started science operations on July 25, 2018, the planet hunter sent back a stunning sequence of serendipitous images showing the motion of a comet. Taken over the course of 17 hours on July 25, these TESS images helped demonstrate the satellite's ability to collect a prolonged set of stable periodic images covering a broad region of the sky—all critical factors in finding transiting planets orbiting nearby stars.

Over the course of these tests, TESS took images of C/2018 N1, a comet discovered by NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite on June 29. The comet, located about 29 million miles (48 million kilometers) from Earth in the southern constellation Piscis Austrinus, is seen to move across the frame from right to left as it orbits the Sun. The comet's tail, which consists of gases carried away from the comet by an outflow from the Sun called the solar wind, extends to the top of the frame and gradually pivots as the comet glides across the field of view.

In addition to the comet, the images reveal a treasure trove of other astronomical activity. The stars appear to shift between white and black as a result of image processing. The shift also highlights variable stars—which change brightness either as a result of pulsation, rapid rotation, or by eclipsing binary neighbors. Asteroids in our solar system appear as small white dots moving across the field of view. Towards the end of the video, one can see a faint broad arc of light moving across the middle section of the frame from left to right. This is stray light from Mars, which is located outside the frame. The images were taken when Mars was at its brightest near opposition, or its closest distance, to Earth.

These images were taken during a short period near the end of the mission's commissioning phase, prior to the start of science operations. The movie presents just a small fraction of TESS's active field of view. The team continues to fine-tune the spacecraft's performance as it searches for distant worlds.