NASA has a new project set to launch in 2017 and it’s going to be big. The TESS project will be tasked with the most trendy task in astronomy these days: finding exoplanets. Using a slew of wide-view cameras, TESS will peer tirelessly at the stars looking for “transits,” or dips in brightness when an orbiting exoplanet passes in front of it’s star. This will be an exciting launch because TESS will be able to cover about 400 times the amount of sky that the current Kepler mission can, so we can soon expect the number of exoplanets to increase drastically. This project will be able to work in tandem with the James Webb Space Telescope, whose infrared lenses will be perfect for examining these new planets once they are found.
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I also wrote about the new TESS project this week. I thought it was really cool that the new technology allows it to focus on Earth-sized exoplanets, eliminating past technological constraints to identifying small planets. This got me wondering just how soon we might see a planet similar to our own, and if we might actually find life in other solar systems during our lifetimes.
I think this new technology is going to be very useful for finding exoplanets. The transit-eclipse technique of finding exoplanets is beneficial because it can determine the size of planets. Our biggest limitation is having telescopes powerful enough to observe these planets, but this mission should help mitigate that problem.