TESS mission

Why in news?

• NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) Mission spotted three giant planets that are orbiting dangerously close to their stars and will be consumed by their stars.

TESS mission:

• TESS is a space telescope for NASA's Explorer program, designed to search for exoplanets using the transit method in an area 400 times larger than that covered by the Kepler mission
• TESS was launched in 2018, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
• The primary mission objective for TESS is to survey the brightest stars near the Earth for transiting exoplanets over a two-year period.
• The TESS satellite uses an array of wide-field cameras to perform a survey of 85% of the sky.
• With TESS, it is possible to study the mass, size, density and orbit of a large cohort of small planets, including a sample of rocky planets in the habitable zones of their host stars.

Orbit:

• TESS will occupy a never-before-used orbit high above Earth. The elliptical orbit, called P/2, is exactly half of the moon’s orbital period; this means that TESS will orbit Earth every 13.7 days.
• Its closest point to Earth is about triple the distance of geosynchronous orbit, where most communications satellites operate.

How it works?

• It will use transit method to detect exoplanets.
• It watches distant stars for small dips in brightness, which can indicate that planet has passed in front of them.
• Repeated dips will indicate planet passing in front of its star. This data has to be validated by repeated observations and verified by scientists.

Significance of the mission:

• TESS is designed to build on the work of its predecessor, the Kepler space telescope, which discovered the bulk of some 3,700 exoplanets documented during the past 20 years and is running out of fuel.
• NASA expects to pinpoint thousands more previously unknown worlds, perhaps hundreds of them Earth-sized or “super-Earth” sized – no larger than twice as big as our home planet.
• Those are believed the most likely to feature rocky surfaces or oceans and are thus considered the best candidates for life to evolve.

PRACTICE QUESTION:

Consider the following statements regarding NASA’s  TESS mission:

1. It search for planets outside of our solar system, including those that could support life.

2. It is placed in the lower earth orbit

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 only

(c) Both 1 and 2

(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Answer