M
Mike Wehner
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- NASA's TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, has completed its primary mission and will now move on to an extended mission where it will continue to hunt for new worlds.
- TESS has already spotted at least 66 new planets, and scientists are working to confirm the discovery of another 2,100 or so.
- The spacecraft will now return to scanning the southern skies in search of new planets and astronomical events.
NASA's most powerful tool for spotting exoplanets is TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. The spacecraft scans the skies for tiny dips in star brightness that reveal the presence of distant planets, even if we can't directly see them. Now, after two years, TESS has officially completed its primary mission, but like many of NASA's tools, TESS still has plenty of life left and will begin an extended mission that NASA hopes will lead to even more incredible discoveries.
Thus far, TESS has mapped roughly 75% of the sky as seen from Earth. It does so in large chunks, monitoring sections of the sky for changes in star brightness over the course of months. During its primary mission, TESS discovered 66 confirmed exoplanets, and a whopping 2,000+ that are still awaiting confirmation.
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NASA’s exoplanet hunter finished its mission… sort of originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 12 Aug 2020 at 23:12:01 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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