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SpaceX launches NASA's planet-hunting TESS mission from Cape Canaveral

Over two years, four ultra-sensitive cameras mounted on the 800-pound TESS spacecraft built by Orbital ATK will detect the faintest of shadows as planets.
Credit: Craig Bailey, FLORIDA TODAY-USA TODAY NETWORK
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40 at 6:51 p.m. Wednesday, April 18, 2018. The rocket is carrying NASA's planet-hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission.

CAPE CANVERAL, Fla. -- Stargazers have always wondered: Are we are alone in the universe?

“And until 25 years ago, the only planets we knew about were the eight in our own solar system,” said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA headquarters. “But since then we’ve found thousands of planets orbiting other stars, and we think that all the stars in our own galaxy must have their own family of planets.”

A NASA spacecraft launched Wednesday evening from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is expected to discover thousands more families of so-called exoplanets circling bright, nearby stars, some of which might have the ingredients needed to support life.

The $337 million Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission, or TESS, roared from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:51 p.m. atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and was deployed 49 minutes later in an orbit stretching between Earth and the moon.

Photos: SpaceX launches NASA's planet-hunting TESS mission from Cape Canaveral

Over two years, four ultra-sensitive cameras mounted on the 800-pound TESS spacecraft built by Orbital ATK will detect the faintest of shadows as planets — ranging from Earth-like rocky ones to gas giants — cross, or transit, their host stars.

TESS builds upon NASA’s Kepler mission, which launched from Cape Canaveral nine years ago and is nearing the end of its life.

Using the same detection method, Kepler and its successor K2 mission identified more than 2,600 planets while looking at one small piece of sky. Many are too distant and dim to make easy candidates for follow-up study.

“One of the many amazing things that Kepler told us is that planets are everywhere,” said Padi Boyd, the TESS guest investigator program lead from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “It’s time for us to find the planets that are closest to us orbiting bright, nearby stars, because these will be the touchstone systems.”

TESS will survey nearly the entire sky, staring at a slice for 27 days before rotating to the next of 26 sections. Cameras will monitor the brightest 200,000 dwarf stars, covering the southern sky for the first year, then the northern.

“TESS is going to dramatically increase the number of planets that we have to study,” said George Ricker, the mission’s lead scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s going to more than double the number that have been seen and detected by Kepler.”

Scientists estimate TESS will discover more than 50 Earth-sized planets, and hundreds that are less than twice Earth's size. Some will orbit within the habitable zones of their stars, where it’s not too hot or cold for liquid water to exist on the surface.

Ground-based telescopes initially will help verify suspected planets and measure their masses and densities to determine what sort of planets they are. History has shown there could be surprises.

“We’re going to discover a diversity of exoplanets,” said Stephen Rinehart, TESS project scientist from Goddard. “We’re going to find rocky planets, we’re going to find gas planets, ice balls, and who knows what else?”

NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble observatories and eventually the James Webb Space Telescope then will study selected exoplanets from space. The Webb will be able to analyze planets’ atmospheres for signatures of habitability.

“TESS is the first step toward finding habitable planets,” said Rinehart.

Even the closest exoplanets found in our solar neighborhood will be light years away — too far for humans to visit. But the catalog TESS produces will establish the best targets for future robotic explorers.

“The thing that we can imagine is this armada of nanosatellites that will be sweeping out from the Earth to send back information,” said Ricker. “That’s one thing that I think will be a lasting legacy of TESS.”

Less than nine minutes after the mission's blastoff Wednesday, the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket dropped from space, deployed legs and touched down on the deck of a ship floating in the Atlantic Ocean. It will be added to SpaceX’s stable of used rockets available to fly again.

Wednesday’s launch was the second in five days from the Space Coast, following Saturday’s launch for the Air Force by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

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