CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's next planet-hunting mission has arrived in Florida to begin preparations for launch. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station nearby NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than April 16, pending range approval. TESS was delivered Feb. 12 aboard a truck from Orbital ATK in Dulles, Virginia, where it spent 2017 being assembled and tested. Over the next month, the spacecraft will be prepped for launch at Kennedy’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF).
TESS is the next step in NASA’s search for planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. The mission will scan nearly the entire sky to monitor more than 200,000 of the nearest and brightest stars in search of transit events - periodic dips in a star’s brightness caused by planets passing in front of their stars. TESS is expected to find thousands of exoplanets.
TESS is part of NASA's Explorer program. NASA continues to fund missions under the Explorer program. Although the agency recently canceled the GEMS program, NASA officials say this was due to cost overruns rather than problems with the program's budget. In November 2014, NASA officially confirmed the selection of the TESS and ICON programs. In July 2015, the agency selected three candidates for a Small Explorer mission to launch later this decade. NASA is now making progress on the next Heliophysics mission as well as its next Mission of Opportunity.
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