Are we alone? Tess will help us answer that.
Seems every time I look at Kepler or articles on exoplanets, one common question keeps coming up: Are we alone in the universe?
We have Hubble still taking remarkable photos, and with the Spitzer space telescope unexpectedly able to use it’s “infrared vision” to help Hubble look in the right spot, the two of them were actually able to start looking for Earth-like planets. (Or at least for planets that were orbiting a star like we do).
Then came Kepler, who’s specific mission is to search out exoplanets by specifically measuring brightness changes that would be expected if a planet was orbiting a star.
Those spacecraft are all in existence today and a lot of science has been learned as a result.
But Tess is next and it’s mission is to use it’s on board camera systems to physically map all the closest planetary systems out there. That’s right … map the total sky! It will perform the same type of brightness measuring the Kepler telescope does but Tess will be able to look at stars that are 30 – 100 times brighter. That means more exoplanet discoveries are expected.
Tess is planned for launch in 2017 and will take a bit to get into it’s final orbit. After that it will take 2 years to complete it’s intended mission, but could be in orbit for decades so new discoveries even after that are quite exciting to think about.
This introductory NASA Video introduces the mission