NASA's Next Space Telescope Will Search Planets Closer To Home

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search exoplanets orbiting the nearest stars just outside the solar system using the transit method. The next space telescope will be launched in between 2017 and 2018.

The mission of TESS is to detect small planets with bright stars in the solar system. TESS is the first-ever spaceborne, all-sky transit survey. It identifies planets, which range from Earth-sized to gas giants, orbiting a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances.

TESS searches the planets and reveals the planet's presence. It also provides additional information about the planets. It can measure the sizes of the planets it sees and how long it takes them to complete an orbit. This information tells whether a planet is capable of supporting life.

Another goal of TESS is to make observations of other astrophysical objects through the Guest Investigator (GI) Program. The spacecraft is capable of achieving interesting studies on various types of astronomical target.

Padi Boyd, director of the Guest Investigator Program Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center explained that the goal of the GI Program is to maximize the amount of science that comes out of TESS. He further explained that although TESS was conceptualized in detecting planets transiting in front of stars, its unique mission characteristics mean that the potential science TESS can do includes far more than just exoplanets.

Boyd added that TESS could detect the broad range of objects as part of the GI Program. These include binary stars, flaring young stars, supermassive black holes in distant active galaxies and supernovae in nearby galaxies. 

The scientists are eager to know the potential discoveries of TESS for the years to come. They expect that TESS would observe at least 200,000 stars during the two years of its spaceflight mission. This will result in the discovery of thousands of new exoplanets, according to NASA.