TESS — Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Спутник наблюдения за транзитами экзопланет)- 19.04.18

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SpaceX‏Подлинная учетная запись @SpaceX 11 мин. назад

Falcon 9 and @NASA_TESS are vertical on Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Weather is 80% favorable for today's launch at 6:32 p.m. EDT, 22:32 UTC.

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https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/04/16/spacex-poised-to-launch-planet-hunter/

SpaceX poised to launch planet-hunter
April 16, 2018 | William Harwood

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION


Artist's concept of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Credit: NASA

SpaceX readied a Falcon 9 rocket for takeoff Monday to launch a planet-hunting satellite for NASA that will monitor the light fr om countless stars to find potentially habitable planets worthy of follow-up studies by more powerful ground- and space-based observatories.

The Falcon 9, carrying the $337 million Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, was scheduled for launch from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:32 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) Monday, the opening of a short 30-second window. Forecasters predicted an 80 percent chance of favorable weather.

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The launching will mark SpaceX's eighth so far this year and the 53rd of a Falcon 9 overall. The company hopes to recover the rocket's first stage with a landing on an off-shore droneship, the "Of Course I Still Love You." If successful, the California rocket-builder's record will stand at 24 booster landings, 12 on land and 12 on the deck of a ship.

The rocket's second stage engine was expected to fire twice before releasing TESS into an elliptical orbit 49 minutes after launch. If all goes well, the spacecraft will fly past the moon on May 16 for a gravity-assist flyby that will put it in a unique 13.7-day orbit that will repeatedly use lunar gravity to maintain a stable trajectory.

Once on station, TESS's four 16.8-megapixel cameras, each equipped with four state-of-the-art CCD detectors, will spend at least two years monitoring starlight across the southern and then northern skies, on the lookout for the tell-tale dimming that occurs when a planet moves in front of its host star — a transit — as viewed from the spacecraft.

By carefully studying how the light dims and then brightens, astronomers analyzing TESS data will be able to detect the presence of worlds around countless stars across 85 percent of the sky, ranging from Earth-size planets to so-called "super Earths" and on up the scale to gas giants as large or larger than Jupiter.

But the goal is to identify stars hosting relatively small, rocky Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zones of their suns at distances that allow water to exist as a liquid, a requirement for life as it is known on Earth.

Prime candidates from TESS's survey will, in turn, be studied in detail by NASA's powerful James Webb Space Telescope after its launch in 2020, by an upcoming European Space Agency space telescope and follow-on spacecraft as well as huge ground-based observatories currently under construction.

"You can think of TESS as the finder scope for the James Webb Space Telescope," astrophysicist Padi Boyd, TESS deputy project scientist, told CBS News. "TESS is basically the discoverer, it's going to find the really exciting planets that we can then follow up with powerful telescopes."


The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is prepared for encapsulation inside the Falcon 9 rocket's nose shroud. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Paul Hertz, director of astrophysics at NASA Headquarters, said with those larger telescopes, "we'll be able to look for tell-tale signs in the atmospheres of those planets that might tell us what the planets are made of and perhaps even whether they have the kinds of gases that on Earth are an indication of life."

"TESS itself will not be able to find life beyond Earth," he said, "but TESS will help us figure out wh ere to point our larger telescopes in that search."

Since its launch in 2009, NASA's Kepler space telescope, which also monitored shadow transits, has discovered thousands of exoplanets in a target area much smaller than TESS's. Based on statistical analysis, astronomers now believe virtually every star in the Milky Way hosts, or once hosted, one or more planets.

TESS, built by Orbital ATK, was designed to take the search for exoplanets to another level, vastly expanding the number of stars monitored.

TESS's four cameras, developed at MIT, are arranged to shoot 24-degree-wide squares stretching from the celestial equator to the poles, spending 27 days to collect a single 96-degree long sector. The spacecraft then will adjust its orientation and spend another 27 days collecting another sector. And so on.

During a 27-day observation period, TESS will monitor the brightness of every star visible in all four cameras every 30 minutes. Fifteen thousand stars in each sector, sel ected before launch as prime candidates to host exoplanets, will be monitored every two minutes.

It will take a year to collect the 13 sectors needed to map the southern sky and another year to map its northern counterpart.

By the end of its initial two-year mission, TESS will have measured starlight across 85 percent of the sky. And unlike Kepler, the new observatory is optimized to study light from the most common stars in the galaxy, reddish M dwarfs that are smaller and cooler than Earth's sun.

"I think it's fair to say that the CCDs that TESS is flying are the most perfect CCDs that have ever been flown on any science mission, NASA or otherwise," said George Ricker, TESS principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We're very sensitive to cool stars. It turns out that the majority of the stars in the Milky Way are cool stars that have a temperature about half that of the sun.

"So we've optimized the field in such a way, because these are the types of stars that were really not possible to explore very well with Kepler."

And because the M dwarf stars are one-half to one-quarter the diameter of Earth's sun, when an exoplanet passes in from "it makes a much deeper shadow," Ricker said. "Also, they're cooler, so they emit less light, therefore the habitable zone is very close in, and the probability that you're going to have a transit is greatly increased."

While TESS is fine tuned to find Earth-size or slightly larger planets orbiting their stars in those close-in habitable zones it also will collect data about larger planets orbiting brighter stars.

"You can go out on a dark night and you can see 6,000 stars or so in the sky with your naked eye," said Ricker. "We're going to look at every single one of those stars, and that's the real science yield that we're going to have with TESS.

"Once we find the planets associated with them, those are going to be the primary candidates that everyone — all astronomers for centuries to come — (are) going to focus on. That's the excitement that we have about this mission. This is really a mission for the ages."

The stuff of science fiction just a few decades ago, astronomers now envision using powerful new ground- and space-based telescopes in the years ahead to spectroscopically study starlight passing through the atmospheres of such exoplanets to look for traces of chemicals generated by industrial activity.

While that will take instruments not yet built, "the TESS planets should be really great candidates for us to start to peer into the atmospheres of these planets with spectroscopy, what allows us to put together the atoms and molecules making up that atmosphere," Boyd said.

But it will not be easy, and "we're going to need extremely large telescopes to start to really put the signatures of the atmospheres into perspective and search for life signs," she said.

Kepler, Boyd said, was designed to answer one question: how common are Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars.

"The answer we got fr om Kepler was that planets are everywhere and that on average, every star in the Milky Way has a planet," she said. "So that's hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy. ... Now TESS is taking Kepler's results, that planets are everywhere, and TESS will find the nearest transiting exoplanet systems to Earth."

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NASA EDGE: TESS Live Show

NASA EDGE

Трансляция началась 1 час назад

 (39:00)

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How Winking Stars Point Us To Distant Worlds

NASA Goddard

Опубликовано: 16 апр. 2018 г.

How do we spot something as tiny and faint as a planet trillions of miles away? The trick is to look at the star! So far, most of the exoplanets – worlds beyond our solar system – we've found were detected by looking for tiny dips in the brightness of their host stars! These dips are caused by the planet passing between us and its star – an event called a "transit."

Our newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), will seek out transits around 200,000 of the nearest and brightest stars in the sky.

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https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/04/16/photos-tess-prepared-for-launch-in-florida/

Photos: TESS prepared for launch in Florida
April 16, 2018 Stephen Clark

These photos show NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite undergoing preparations for launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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These photos show the 798-pound (362-kilogram) spacecraft, built by Orbital ATK, deploying its power-generating solar panels during a ground test in February at KSC's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. TESS was encapsulated inside the Falcon 9 rocket's payload shroud last week in preparation for its transfer to SpaceX's rocket hangar at Cape Canaveral's Complex 40 launch pad.

TESS will survey approximately 90 percent of the sky with a suite of four 16.8-megapixel cameras, spending the first half of its baselined two-year mission looking at the southern sky, then pointing at swaths of the northern sky in year two of the observing campaign.

The observatory will detect transits, or blips in starlight, as planets pass between TESS and their host stars. The mission will focus on roughly 200,000 bright, nearby stars, including all the stars visible to the naked eye in the night sky, making TESS's discoveries prime candidates for more detailed follow-up research by ground-based telescopes and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

Liftoff is set for Monday at 6:32 p.m. EDT (2232 GMT).


Credit: NASA/Leif Heimbold


Credit: NASA/Leif Heimbold


Credit: NASA/Leif Heimbold


Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett


The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is prepared for encapsulation inside the Falcon 9 rocket's nose shroud. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett


Credit: NASA/Leif Heimbold


Credit: NASA/Leif Heimbold


Credit: NASA

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https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/04/16/falcon-9-launch-timeline-with-tess/

Falcon 9 launch timeline with TESS
April 16, 2018 | Stephen Clark

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Monday, heading east over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite into orbit approximately 49 minutes after launch.

Спойлер

The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket is poised for launch from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 6:32:07 p.m. EDT (2232:07 GMT) Monday at the opening of a 30-second launch window.

NASA's 798-pound (362-kilogram) Transiting Exoplanet Survey satellite is perched atop the rocket to begin a two-year all-sky survey in search of planets around bright stars in our solar neighborhood.

SpaceX will attempt to recover the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage booster on a drone ship parked in the Atlantic Ocean downrange from Cape Canaveral.

The timeline below outlines the launch sequence for the Falcon 9 flight with TESS, which will be injected into an elliptical transfer orbit ranging in altitude between roughly 120 miles (200 kilometers) and 168,000 miles (270,000 kilometers). TESS will use its own propulsion system, and a lunar flyby maneuver May 16, to steer into an observing orbit in resonance with the moon.

Data source: SpaceX

T-0:00:00: Liftoff


After the rocket's nine Merlin engines pass an automated health check, hold-down clamps will release the Falcon 9 booster for liftoff from pad 40.

T+0:01:08: Mach 1


The Falcon 9 rocket reaches Mach 1, the speed of sound, as the nine Merlin 1D engines provide more than 1.7 million pounds of thrust.

T+0:01:16: Max Q


The Falcon 9 rocket reaches Max Q, the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure.

T+0:02:29: MECO


The Falcon 9's nine Merlin 1D engines shut down.

T+0:02:32: Stage 1 Separation


The Falcon 9's first stage separates from the second stage moments after MECO.

T+0:02:34: First Ignition of Second Stage


The second stage Merlin 1D vacuum engine ignites for a six-minute burn to put the rocket and TESS into a preliminary parking orbit.

T+0:03:05: Fairing Jettison


The 5.2-meter (17.1-foot) diameter payload fairing jettisons once the Falcon 9 rocket ascends through the dense lower atmosphere. The 43-foot-tall fairing is made of two clamshell-like halves composed of carbon fiber with an aluminum honeycomb core.

T+0:08:17: SECO 1


The second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket shuts down after reaching a preliminary low-altitude orbit. The upper stage and TESS begin a coast phase scheduled to last more than 32 minutes before the second stage Merlin vacuum engine reignites.

T+0:40:50: Second Ignition of Second Stage


The Falcon 9's second stage Merlin engine restarts to propel the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite into an elliptical high Earth orbit ranging between roughly 120 miles (200 kilometers) and 168,000 miles (270,000 kilometers) above Earth.

T+0:41:49: SECO 2


The Merlin engine shuts down after a short burn to put the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite in the proper orbit for deployment.

T+0:48:42: TESS Separation


The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite separates from the Falcon 9 rocket in its elliptical high Earth transfer orbit.

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04/16/2018 19:13 Stephen Clark

Here are a couple of photos of the Falcon 9 rocket on its launch pad this morning at Cape Canaveral. Credit: Steven Young/Spaceflight Now

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Новый «охотник за планетами» НАСА отправляется в космос сегодня

НАСА готово запустить на орбиту космический аппарат размером со стиральную машину и стоимостью 337 миллионов USD, целью которого станут поиски планет за пределами Солнечной системы, в частности планет размером с Землю, обращающихся вокруг близлежащих звезд. Спутник Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) отправится в космос в понедельник, 16 апреля, в 6:32 вечера по местному времени (22:32 GMT) на борту ракеты-носителя Falcon 9 со стартовой площадки космодрома, расположенного на мысе Канаверал, штат Флорида, США. Основной целью этой миссии на следующие, два года станет сканирование более чем 200 000 самых ярких близлежащих звезд в поисках планет, обращающихся вокруг них и вызывающих характерное периодическое снижение яркости родительской звезды при прохождении перед ее диском. Согласно прогнозам НАСА миссия TESS поможет открыть свыше 20000 экзопланет, включая 50 планет размером с Землю и до 500 планет размером не более двух диаметров Земли.
Спутник TESS создавался отчасти как научный преемник аппарата Kepler («Кеплер») американского космического агентства, который стал первым в своем роде «охотником за планетами», открывшим для нас тысячи далеких планет. В настоящее время у стареющего космического телескопа иссякают запасы топлива, и его миссия естественным образом подходит к завершению. Спутник TESS, оснащенный четырьмя современными камерами, будет сканировать область неба, размер которой превышает в 350 раз размер области неба, наблюдаемой «Кеплером» - новая миссия просканирует в течение двух лет примерно 85 процентов всего неба.
Согласно НАСА шанс на то, что погода сегодня будет благоприятствовать запуску, оценивается в 80 процентов.

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Chris G - NSF‏ @ChrisG_NSF 9 мин. назад

Scrubbed for today. #NASA #TESS #SpaceX #Falcon9

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Laura Mayorga‏ @mayorgalc 19 мин. назад

We're being told the launch had been scrubbed for 48 hrs @NASA_TESS #TESSyay

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William Harwood‏ @cbs_spacenews 6 мин. назад

F9/TESS: Multiple sources indicating TESS launch delayed to 6:51pm EDT Wednesday; no official word yet

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04/16/2018 22:59 Stephen Clark

Multiple sources say the next launch opportunity will come at 6:51 p.m. EDT (2251 GMT) Wednesday. The launch times change based on TESS's orbital target and the position of the moon, which the satellite will use to help maneuver into its final high-altitude science orbit.

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Ну вот. Я недаром его похвалил.

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SpaceX‏Подлинная учетная запись @SpaceX 43 сек. назад

Standing down today to conduct additional GNC analysis, and teams are now working towards a targeted launch of @NASA_TESS on Wednesday, April 18.

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Chris G - NSF‏ @ChrisG_NSF 4 мин. назад

So that's Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) as the reason from #SpaceX for the scrub today. #NASA #TESS #SpaceX #Falcon9

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На всякий случай, чтоб далеко не ходить (#58) - возможные даты/времена пуска: