{"id":18567,"date":"2018-04-17T00:31:31","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacex-and-nasa-delay-launch-of-tess-planet-hunter-to-check-guidance-analysis\/"},"modified":"2018-04-17T00:31:31","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:31:31","slug":"spacex-and-nasa-delay-launch-of-tess-planet-hunter-to-check-guidance-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacex-and-nasa-delay-launch-of-tess-planet-hunter-to-check-guidance-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX and NASA delay launch of TESS planet hunter to check guidance analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_412216\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-412216\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-412216\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/180415-tess-630x375.jpg\" alt=\"TESS\" width=\"630\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/180415-tess-630x375.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/180415-tess-768x457.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/180415-tess.jpg 1041w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-412216\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist\u2019s conception shows the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. (NASA Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>NASA and SpaceX say they\u2019ll take more time to launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey System, or TESS, just to make sure the $337 million mission will be on the right track to hunt for planets beyond our solar system.<\/p>\n<p>TESS\u2019 liftoff aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket had been scheduled for today, but in an online update, NASA said \u201claunch teams are standing down today to conduct additional guidance, navigation and control analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The launch was retargeted for Wednesday, with an anticipated liftoff time of 6:51 p.m. ET (3:51 p.m. PT).<\/p>\n<p>NASA emphasized that the satellite, which is a little smaller than a subcompact car, was in \u201cexcellent health and remains ready for launch\u201d from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.<\/p>\n<p>Guidance, navigation and control is always important for a space mission \u2014 but for TESS, the task is particularly complex.<\/p>\n<p>The spacecraft is meant to be maneuvered into an unusual Earth orbit that ranges in altitude from roughly 63,000 to 200,000 miles. From that vantage point, TESS will keep tabs on 200,000 of the brightest stars in our celestial neighborhood, looking for the telltale changes in brightness that result when a planet crosses over the star\u2019s disk.<\/p>\n<p>That transit detection technique was pioneered by earlier probes such as NASA\u2019s Kepler telescope, which was launched in 2009. Kepler stared at 250,000 distant stars in a cross-shaped area equal to 0.25 percent of the sky, and identified the signatures of more than 5,000 confirmed planets and candidates.<\/p>\n<p>TESS\u2019 four wide-field telescopic cameras will survey an area hundreds of times as wide, adding up to 85 percent of the entire sky. The mission will focus on planets circling bright stars that are less than 300 light-years from Earth.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"How NASA\u2019s Newest Planet Hunter Scans the Sky\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/evHF_mnIdj4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After TESS identifies its candidates, scientists around the world will make further observations to confirm that they really are planets, and determine whether they\u2019re gas giants like Jupiter and Neptune, or rocky planets like Earth and Mars.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot only scientists will be following up these planets, but&nbsp;also amateur astronomers can use their own smaller telescopes to help confirm which planets are true, and which are not,\u201d said Diana Dragomir, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n<p>Based on Kepler\u2019s statistics, the science team expects to detect&nbsp;more than 1,500 transiting exoplanet candidates over the course of a two-year primary mission, including roughly 500 Earth-sized and \u201cSuper Earth\u201d planets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese are the exoplanets that will be easiest to follow up, so that we can study the planets in great detail and learn more about their characteristics,\u201d Paul Hertz, who heads NASA\u2019s astrophysics division, said during a pre-launch briefing.<\/p>\n<p>Further follow-ups on potentially habitable planets could be done using more powerful telescopes, such as NASA\u2019s yet-to-be-launched James Webb Space Telescope, which is designed to analyze alien atmospheres and help scientists look for potential signs of life.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers might even consider sending swarms of tiny probes to sweep by the most promising candidates \u2014 a strategy that the Breakthrough Starshot initiative is already working on for the Alpha Centauri star system.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFifty, sixty, 100 years from now, you could use those same techniques to thoroughly explore the solar neighborhood,\u201d said MIT\u2019s George Ricker, principal investigator for the TESS mission. \u201cThe thing that we can imagine is that there\u2019s this armada of nanosatellites that\u2019ll be sweeping out from the Earth to send back information.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ricker and other scientists said the planetary catalog generated by TESS could well become the guidebook for that armada.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTESS is just the first step in that journey,\u201d said Stephen Rinehart, TESS project scientist at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center. \u201cBut I want to add that we care about all the planets that we find, not just the habitable ones&nbsp;\u2014 because for a variety of reasons, all the planets matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Like Kepler, TESS will serve as a planetary population census giving astronomers a better idea as to the origin and evolution of planetary systems \u2014 including our own.<\/p>\n<p><em>This is an updated version of a report first published at 8 a.m. PT April 16.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An artist\u2019s conception shows the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. (NASA Illustration) NASA and SpaceX say they\u2019ll take more time to launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey System, or TESS, just to make sure the $337 million mission will be on the right track to hunt for planets beyond our solar system. TESS\u2019 liftoff aboard a SpaceX [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[559,479,4434,4709,316,2398],"class_list":["post-18567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-exoplanets","tag-falcon-9","tag-falcon-launch","tag-planets","tag-spacex","tag-tess"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18567"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}