Meet TESS, the satellite that will find thousands of planets
By Ashley Strickland, CNN
Updated
2:17 PM EDT, Wed March 28, 2018
Photos: Cool unmanned space missions
SPHEREx, the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, will study the beginning and evolution of the universe and determine how common the ingredients for life are within the planetary systems found in our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is targeted to launch in 2024.
PHOTO:
Caltech
Photos: Cool unmanned space missions
This illustration shows NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft-lander approaching a site on Saturn's exotic moon, Titan. Taking advantage of Titan's dense atmosphere and low gravity, Dragonfly will explore dozens of locations across the icy world, sampling and measuring the compositions of Titan's organic surface materials to characterize the habitability of Titan's environment and investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry.
PHOTO:
JHU-APL/NASA
Photos: Cool unmanned space missions
NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, slated to launch in the mid-2020s, has been named the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, after NASA's first chief astronomer.
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Courtesy NASA
Photos: Cool unmanned space missions
This is an artist's concept of the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will investigate Jupiter's icy moon.
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JPL-Caltech/NASA
Photos: Cool unmanned space missions
Bright swaths of red in the upper atmosphere, known as airglow, can be seen in this image from the International Space Station. NASA's ICON mission will observe how interactions between terrestrial weather and a layer of charged particles called the ionosphere create the colorful glow.
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NASA
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NASA's Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk mission -- known as the GOLD mission -- will examine the response of the upper atmosphere to force from the sun, the magnetosphere and the lower atmosphere.
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NASA
Photos: Cool unmanned space missions
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite launched in April and is already identifying exoplanets orbiting the brightest stars just outside our solar system. In the first three months since it began surveying the sky in July, it has found three exoplanets, with the promise of many more ahead.
PHOTO:
MIT News/Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA
Photos: Cool unmanned space missions
This illustration shows the position of NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes outside the heliosphere, a protective bubble created by the sun that extends well past the orbit of Pluto.
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This is an artist's concept of the Solar Probe Plus spacecraft approaching the sun. In order to unlock the mysteries of the corona, but also to protect a society that is increasingly dependent on technology from the threats of space weather, we will send Solar Probe Plus to touch the sun.
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Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/NASA
Photos: Cool unmanned space missions
Breakthrough Starshot —
This illustration shows light beams from Earth pushing a tiny spacecraft's sail. The proposed Breakthrough Starshot project would send hundreds of "nanocraft" space probes 4.37 light years away -- at speeds of up to 100 million miles an hour -- to to explore Alpha Centauri, our nearest star system. The ambitious project is many years away from becoming reality.
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Courtesy BREAKTHROUGH INITIATIVES
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Breakthrough Starshot —
Philanthropist Yuri Milner, left, and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking host a press conference to announce Breakthrough Starshot on Tuesday, April 12, in New York City. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg also sits on the mission's board of directors.
PHOTO:
Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize Foundation
Photos: Cool unmanned space missions
New Horizons —
No spacecraft had ever gone to Pluto before NASA's New Horizons made its fly-by on July 14, 2015. The probe sent back amazing, detailed images of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. It also dazzled scientists with new information about Pluto's atmosphere and landscape. New Horizons is still going today, heading out into the Kuiper Belt.
PHOTO:
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
Photos: Cool unmanned space missions
Curiosity Mars Rover —
This image shows the Curiosity rover doing a test drill on a rock dubbed "Bonanza King" to see if it would be a good place to dig deeper and take a sample. Curiosity was launched in 2011, and it is the most advanced rover ever built. It's helping scientists determine whether Mars is, or ever was, habitable for life forms.
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NASA/JPL
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Kepler —
The Kepler space observatory is the first NASA mission dedicated to finding Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zones of stars. Launched in 2009, Kepler has been detecting planets and planet candidates with a wide range of sizes and orbital distances. Yes, we are still finding new planets.
PHOTO:
NASA
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NEOWISE —
NASA's infrared-wavelength space telescope called NEOWISE may help make us safer. The space telescope hunts for asteroids and comets, including those that could pose a threat to Earth. During its planned three-year survey through 2016, NEOWISE will identify near-Earth objects, gather data on their size and take other measurements. The probe was launched on December 14, 2009, for its original mission -- to perform an all-sky astronomical survey. The probe was put in hibernation for several years, but it was fired up again in December 2013 to hunt for asteroids. Its images are now available to the public online.
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NASA
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Dawn —
NASA's Dawn spacecraft began orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres in March. Scientists were surprised by the large white spots shining on Ceres, seen above. On its way to Ceres, Dawn spent time studying the proto-planet Vesta in 2001. Ceres and Vesta are the two most massive bodies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The mission, launched in 2007, is giving scientists new knowledge of how the solar system formed and evolved.
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NASA/JPL
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Deep Impact/EPOXI —
NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft was launched on January 12, 2005, and it traveled 268 million miles (431 million kilometers) to hurl its coffee table-sized probe into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005. This image of Tempel 1 was taken by Deep Impact's camera 67 seconds after the probe hit the comet. Scattered light from the collision saturated the camera's detector and caused the bright splash seen in this image. The Deep Impact mission was supposed to end a few weeks later, but NASA approved an extension and renamed the spacecraft EPOXI and sent it on to fly by Comet Hartley 2 in November 2010. The probe stopped communicating with mission managers in September 2013 and was declared lost.
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NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD
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Cassini —
The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission in 2017. The probe was launched on October 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It arrived at Saturn on June 30, 2004. The spacecraft dropped a probe called Huygens to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. It was the first landing on a moon in the outer solar system.
PHOTO:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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Stardust —
The Stardust spacecraft was launched on February 7, 1999, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. After traveling 3.5 billion miles (5.6 billion kilometers), the spacecraft made history by capturing images of asteroid Annefrank and collecting samples of comet Wild 2 and successfully returning them to Earth. It also took spectacular images of comet Tempel 1. The probe's mission ended on March 25, 2011, when mission managers put it in safe mode and turned off the transmitter for the last time.
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NASA
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Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 —
Of all the NASA missions, none has visited as many planets, rings and moons as the twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, which were launched in 1977. Each probe is much farther away from Earth and the sun than Pluto. In August 2012, Voyager 1 made the historic entry into interstellar space, the region between stars. Scientists hope to learn more about this region when Voyager 2 reaches interstellar space. Both spacecraft are still sending scientific information back to NASA.
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NASA
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Surveyor —
Surveyor 1 was the first U.S. spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon. The program ran during the mid-1960s and was declared a success. The program's focus eventually switched to support of the Apollo program.
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NASA
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Explorer 1 —
A model of Explorer 1, America's first satellite, is held by, from left, NASA official William Pickering, scientist James Van Allen and rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun. The team was gathered at a news conference at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington to announce the satellite's successful launch. It had been launched a few hours before, on January 31, 1958.
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NASA
Story highlights
TESS is NASA's latest planet-hunting satellite, launching in April
It is expected to find thousands of exoplanets by surveying 85% of the sky
(CNN) —
TESS the planet hunter is getting ready to launch next month. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is NASA’s next mission in the search for exoplanets, or planets that are outside our solar system.
And TESS will be on the lookout for planets that could support life, officials said Wednesday. Expected to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 16, TESS will pick up the search as the Kepler Space Telescope runs out of fuel.
Kepler, which has discovered more than 4,500 potential planets and confirmed exoplanets, launched in 2009. After mechanical failure in 2013, Kepler entered a new phase of campaigns to survey other areas of the sky for exoplanets, called the K2 mission. This enabled researchers to discover even more exoplanets, understand the evolution of stars and gain insight about supernovae and black holes.
Soon, Kepler’s mission will end, and it will be abandoned in space, orbiting the sun and never getting any closer to Earth than the moon.
TESS will use its fuel to reach orbit around the Earth, with a gravity assist from the moon. That will enable it to have a long-term mission that outlives its two-year objective. TESS will establish an orbit around Earth, and 60 days later, after instrument tests, the two-year mission will officially begin.
TESS will survey an area 400 times larger than what Kepler observed. This includes 200,000 of the brightest nearby stars. Over the course of two years, the four wide-field cameras on board will stare at different sectors of the sky for days at a time.
TESS will look for exoplanets using the transit method, observing slight dips in the brightness of stars as planets pass in front of them. Bright stars allow for easier followup study through ground- and space-based telescopes.
“TESS is helping us explore our place in the universe,” said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters. “Until 20 years ago, we didn’t know of any planets beyond our own solar system. We’ve expanded our understanding of our place in the universe, and TESS will help us keep expanding.”
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NASA
NASA expects TESS to allow for the cataloging of more than 1,500 exoplanets, but it has the potential to find thousands. Of these, officials anticipate, 300 will be Earth-size exoplanets or double-Earth-size Super Earths. Those planets could be the best candidates for supporting life outside our solar system. Like Earth, they are small, rocky and usually within the habitable zone of their star, meaning liquid water can exist on the surface.
“One of the biggest questions in exoplanet exploration is: If an astronomer finds a planet in a star’s habitable zone, will it be interesting from a biologist’s point of view?” said George Ricker, TESS principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research in Cambridge. “We expect TESS will discover a number of planets whose atmospheric compositions, which hold potential clues to the presence of life, could be precisely measured by future observers.”
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This massive and distant exoplanet, called HD106906 b, has an elongated and angled orbit that causes it to take 15,000 Earth years to complete one lap around its twin stars.
PHOTO:
ESA/Hubble/M. Kornmesser
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's impression of a free-floating rogue planet being detected in our Milky Way galaxy using a technique called microlensing. Microlensing occurs when an object in space can warp space-time.
PHOTO:
Jan Skowron/Astronomical Observatory, University of Warsaw
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's impression of exoplanet WASP-189 b orbiting its host star. The star appears to glow blue because it's more than 2,000 degrees hotter than our sun. The planet, which is slightly larger than Jupiter, has a tilted orbit around the star's poles rather than its equator.
PHOTO:
ESA
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
For the first time, an exoplanet has been found orbiting a dead star known as a white dwarf. In this artist's illustration, the Jupiter-sized planet WD 1856 b orbits the white dwarf every day and a half.
PHOTO:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Ce
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This illustration shows a carbon-rich planet with diamond and silica as ts main minerals. Water can convert a carbon-rich planet into one that's made of diamonds. In the interior, the main minerals would be diamond and silica (a layer with crystals in the illustration). The core (dark blue) might be made of an iron-carbon alloy.
PHOTO:
Shim/ASU/Vecteezy
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This image shows a young sun-like star being orbited by two gas giant exoplanets. It was taken by the SPHERE instrument on European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. The star can be seen in the top left corner, and the planets are the two bright dots.
PHOTO:
European Southern Observatory/Bohn et al.
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's impression shows a Neptune-sized planet in the Neptunian Desert. It is extremely rare to find an object of this size and density so close to its star.
PHOTO:
Mark Garlick/University of Warwick
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's impression of the multiplanetary system of newly discovered super-Earths orbiting a nearby red dwarf star called Gliese 887.
PHOTO:
Mark Garlick
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
The newly discovered exoplanet AU Mic b is about the size of Neptune.
PHOTO:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA)
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's impression shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System. Proxima b is a little more massive than the Earth.
PHOTO:
European Southern Observatory/M. Kornmesser
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's illustration of an exoplanet's atmosphere with a white dwarf star visible on the horizon. The starlight of a white dwarf filtered through the atmosphere of an exoplanet that's orbiting it could reveal if the planet has biosignatures.
PHOTO:
Jack Madden/Carl Sagan Institute/Cornell University
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's illustration of the Kepler-88 planetary system, where one giant exoplanet and two smaller planets orbit the Kepler-88 star. The system is more than 1,200 light-years away.
PHOTO:
Adam Makarenko/W. M. Keck Observatory
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an illustration of newly discovered exoplanet Kepler-1649c orbiting around its host red dwarf star.
PHOTO:
NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's illustration shows the night-side view of the exoplanet WASP-76b, where iron rains down from the sky.
PHOTO:
M. Kornmesser/ESO
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's concept of a ringed planet passing in front of its host star. It shows how "puffy" a ringed planet may look to us from afar.
PHOTO:
Robin Dienel/Carnegie Institution for Science
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
The sizes of the 17 new planet candidates, seen here in orange, are compared to colorized representations of Mars, Earth and Neptune. The green planet is KIC-7340288 b, a rocky planet in the habitable zone of its star.
PHOTO:
Michelle Kunimoto
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
Artist's impression of K2-18b. CREDIT Amanda Smith
PHOTO:
courtesy Amanda Smith
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's illustration a massive planet orbiting a cool, young star. In the case of the newly discovered system, the planet is 10 times more massive than Jupiter, and the orbit of the planet is nearly 600 times that of Earth around the sun.
PHOTO:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
Welcome to the KELT-9 system. The host star is a hot, rapidly rotating A-type star that is about 2.5 times more massive and almost twice as hot as our sun. The hot star blasts its nearby planet KELT-9b with massive amounts of radiation, leading to a daylight temperature of 7800 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter that most stars and only 2000 degrees cooler than the sun.
PHOTO:
R. Hurt (IPAC)/NASA/JPL-Caltech
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's rendering of the Proxima Centauri planetary system. The newly discovered super-Earth exoplanet Proxima c, on the right, has an orbit of about 5.2 Earth years around its host star. The system also comprises the smaller Proxima b, on the left, discovered in 2016. Illustration by Lorenzo Santinelli.
PHOTO:
Lorenzo Santinelli
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's concept of GJ180d, the nearest temperate super-Earth to us with the potential to support life.
PHOTO:
Robin Dienel/Courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
An illustration of WASP-12b as it spirals in a death dance towards its star. The planet will meet its end in three million years.
PHOTO:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
TOI 700 d is the first potentially habitable Earth-size planet spotted by NASA's planet-hunting TESS mission.
PHOTO:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
TOI 1338 b is silhouetted by its two host stars, making it the first such discovery for the TESS mission. TESS only detects transits from the larger star
PHOTO:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's illustration shows a wet exoplanet with an oxygen atmosphere. The red sphere is the M-dwarf star the exoplanet orbits.
PHOTO:
Friedlander-Griswold/GSFC/NASA
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's illustration shows a dry exoplanet with an oxygen atmosphere. The red sphere is the M-dwarf star the exoplanet orbits.
PHOTO:
Friedlander-Griswold/GSFC/NASA
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's illustration of the Kepler 51 system shows newly discovered super-puff exoplanets, which are also called "cotton candy" exoplanets because they're so lightweight.
PHOTO:
NASA/ESA/STSci
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's concept illustration shows an exoplanet with two moons orbiting within the habitable zone of a red dwarf star.
PHOTO:
NASA/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/D. Aguilar
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's illustration of two exoplanets colliding in a binary star system.
PHOTO:
Lynette Cook/SOFIA/NASA
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's illustration of a Neptune-type exoplanet in the icy outer reaches of its star system. It could look something like a large, newly discovered gas giant that takes about 20 years to orbit a star 11 light years away from Earth.
PHOTO:
Francis Reddy/NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This image shows a comparison of red dwarf star GJ 3512 to our solar system, as well as other nearby red-dwarf planetary systems.
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's illustration showcases exoplanet K2-18b orbiting its host star. It's currently the only super-Earth exoplanet that has water vapor in its atmosphere and could be within the right temperature to support life.
PHOTO:
ESA/Hubble/M. Kornmesser
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an illustration of an exomoon losing mass as it's being pulled around the gas giant it orbits.
PHOTO:
Thibaut Roger/University of Bern
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
An illustration shows what the orbit of exoplanet HR 5183 b would look like if it was dropped down in our solar system. It would likely swing from the asteroid belt to out past Neptune, the eighth planet in our solar system.
PHOTO:
Adam Makarenko/W. M. Keck Observatory
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
At least two giant planets, aged 20 million years at most, orbit the Beta Pictoris star. A disk of dust and gas surrounding the star can be seen in the background.
PHOTO:
P Rubini/AM Lagrange
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's interpretation of what super-Earth GJ 357 d might look like. It lies within the habitable zone of its star which is 31 light-years from Earth.
PHOTO:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
An artist's impression of a circumplanetary disk around PDS 70 c, a gas giant exoplanet in a star system 370 light-years away.
PHOTO:
NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's illustration shows two gas giant exoplanets orbiting the young star PDS 70. These planets are still growing by gathering material from a surrounding disk. In the process, they have gravitationally carved out a large gap in the disk.
PHOTO:
J. Olmsted (STScI)
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
An artist's illustration of HD 21749c, the first Earth-size planet found by TESS, as well as its sibling, HD 21749b, a warm mini-Neptune.
PHOTO:
Robin Dienel/Carnegie Institution for Science
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
A "hot Saturn" passes in front of its host star in this illustration. Astronomers who study stars used "starquakes" to characterize the star, which provided critical information about the planet.
PHOTO:
Gabriel Perez Diaz/Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
Artist's concept of TESS against background of stars & orbiting planets in the Milky Way. Credit: ESA, M. Kornmesser (ESO), Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET Systems Inc.), Britt Griswold (Maslow Media Group), NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center & Cornell University
PHOTO:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Cornell University
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
A super-telescope made the first direct observation of an exoplanet using optical interferometry. This method revealed a complex exoplanetary atmosphere with clouds of iron and silicates swirling in a planet-wide storm. The technique presents unique possibilities for characterizing many of the exoplanets known today.
PHOTO:
ESO
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This image shows an artist's impression of the surface of Barnard's star b, a cold Super-Earth discovered orbiting Barnard's star 6 light-years away.
PHOTO:
ESO/M. Kornmesser
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's illustration shows newly discovered exoplanet K2-288Bb, 226 light-years away and half the size of Neptune. It orbits the fainter member of a pair of cool M-type stars every 31.3 days.
PHOTO:
Francis Reddy/Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This is an artist's impression of the exoplanet HAT-P-11b. The planet has an extended helium atmosphere that's being blown away by the star, an orange dwarf star smaller but more active than our sun.
PHOTO:
Courtesy of Denis Bajram
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
An artist's illustration of what the super-Earth found around the orange-hued star HD 26965 (also known as 40 Eridani A) might look like. The recently discovered exoplanet is being compared to the fictional planet of Vulcan because Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry said the star was the ideal candidate to host Vulcan, Mr. Spock's home world.
PHOTO:
University of Florida/Don Davis
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
The TRAPPIST-1 star, an ultra-cool dwarf, has seven Earth-size planets orbiting it.
PHOTO:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
For the first time, eight planets have been found orbiting another star, tying with our solar system for the most known planets around a single star. The Kepler-90 system is in the constellation Draco, more than 2,500 light-years from Earth.
PHOTO:
NASA/Ames Research Center/Wendy Stenzel
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's illustration shows exoplanet Ross 128 b, with its red dwarf host star in the background. The planet is only 11 light-years from our solar system. It is now the second-closest temperate planet to be detected, after Proxima b.
PHOTO:
M. Kornmesser/Southern Observatory
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
WASP-121b, 880 light-years away, is considered a hot Jupiter-like planet. It has a greater mass and radius than Jupiter, making it "puffier." If WASP-121b were any closer to its host star, it would be ripped apart by the star's gravity.
PHOTO:
Engine House VFX/Bristol Science Centre/University of Exeter
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
NASA's Kepler space telescope team has identified 219 more planet candidates, 10 of which are near-Earth size and in the habitable zone of their stars.
PHOTO:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's concept shows OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, a planet orbiting an incredibly faint star 13,000 light-years away from us. It is an "iceball" planet with temperatures reaching minus-400 degrees Fahrenheit.
PHOTO:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
LHS 1140b is located in the liquid water habitable zone surrounding its host star, a small, faint red star named LHS 1140. The planet weighs about 6.6 times the mass of Earth and is shown passing in front of LHS 1140. Depicted in blue is the atmosphere the planet may have retained.
PHOTO:
M. Weiss/European Southern Observatory/CfA
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
An artist's concept image of the surface of the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f. Of the seven exoplanets discovered orbiting the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, this one may be the most suitable for life. It is similar in size to Earth, is a little cooler than Earth's temperature and is in the habitable zone of the star, meaning liquid water (and even oceans) could be on the surface. The proximity of the star gives the sky a salmon hue, and the other planets are so close that they appear in the sky, much like our own moon.
PHOTO:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
Artist's conception of the binary system with three giant planets discovered, where one star hosts two planets and the other hosts the third. The system represents the smallest-separation binary in which both stars host planets that has ever been observed.
PHOTO:
Courtesy Robin Dienel
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's impression shows the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our solar system.
PHOTO:
European Southern Observatory/ESO/M. Kornmesser
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
An artist's rendering shows Earth-sized exoplanets TRAPPIST-1b and 1c in a rare double transit event as they pass in front of their ultracool red dwarf star, which allowed Hubble to take a peek at at their atmospheres.
PHOTO:
From NASA
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
Out of a new discovery of 104 exoplanets, astronomers found four similar in size to Earth that are orbiting a dwarf star. Two of them have the potential to support life. The craft depicted in this illustration is the NASA Kepler Space Telescope, which has helped confirm the existence of thousands of exoplanets.
PHOTO:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's impression shows a view of the triple-star system HD 131399 from close to the giant planet orbiting in the system. Located about 320 light-years from Earth, the planet is about 16 million years old, making it also one of the youngest exoplanets discovered to date.
PHOTO:
European Southern Observatory/ESO/L. Calçada
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
An artistic impression of the planet Kepler-1647b, which is nearly identical to Jupiter in both size and mass. The planet is expected to be roughly similar in appearance. But it is much warmer: Kepler-1647b is in the habitable zone.
PHOTO:
Lynette Cook
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
HD-106906b is a gaseous planet 11 times more massive than Jupiter. The planet is believed to have formed in the center of its solar system, before being sent flying out to the edges of the region by a violent gravitational event.
PHOTO:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech)
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
Kepler-10b orbits at a distance more than 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our own sun. Daytime temperatures exceed 1,300 degrees Celsius (2,500 degrees Fahrenheit), which is hotter than lava flows on Earth.
PHOTO:
NASA/Kepler Mission/Dana Berry
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This Jupiter-like planet in the HD-188753 system, 149 light-years from Earth, has three suns. The main star is similar in mass to our own Sun. The system has been compared to Luke Skywalker's home planet Tatooine in "Star Wars."
PHOTO:
NASA/JPL's Planetquest/Caltech
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
Kepler-421b is a Uranus-sized transiting exoplanet with the longest known year, as it circles its star once every 704 days. The planet orbits an orange, K-type star that is cooler and dimmer than our Sun and is located about 1,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra.
PHOTO:
Harvard-Smithsonian, Center for Astrophysics/D. A. Aguilar
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
Astronomers discovered two planets less than three times the size of Earth orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded stellar cluster approximately 3,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
PHOTO:
Michael Bachofner
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artist's conception shows a hypothetical planet with two moons orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. The majority of the sun's closest stellar neighbors are red dwarfs.
PHOTO:
D. Aguilar/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
Kepler-186f was the first validated Earth-sized planet to be found orbiting a distant star in the habitable zone. This zone a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet's surface.
PHOTO:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
Kepler-69c is a super-Earth-size planet similar to Venus. The planet is found in the habitable zone of a star like our sun, approximately 2,700 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
PHOTO:
NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
The Kepler-444 system formed when the Milky Way was just 2 billion years old. The tightly packed system is home to five planets that range in size, the smallest is comparable to the size of Mercury and the largest to Venus, orbiting their sun in less than 10 days.
PHOTO:
Tiago Campante/Peter Devine
Photos: Weird and wonderful planets beyond our solar system
This artistic concept image compares Earth, left, with Kepler-452b, which is about 60% larger. Both planets orbit a G2-type star of about the same temperature; however, the star hosting Kepler-452b is 6 billion years old -- 1.5 billion years older than our sun.
PHOTO:
NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle
These exoplanets will be studied so that NASA can determine which are the best targets for future missions, like the James Webb Space Telescope. That telescope, whose launch was just pushed back to 2020, would be able to characterize the details and atmospheres of exoplanets in ways scientists have not yet been able to do.
“We learned from Kepler that there are more planets than stars in our sky, and now TESS will open our eyes to the variety of planets around some of the closest stars,” Hertz said. “TESS will cast a wider net than ever before for enigmatic worlds whose properties can be probed by NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope and other missions.”
NASA believes that TESS will build on Kepler’s momentum and open the study of exoplanets in unprecedented ways.
“TESS is opening a door for a whole new kind of study,” said Stephen Rinehart, TESS project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “We’re going to be able study individual planets and start talking about the differences between planets. The targets TESS finds are going to be fantastic subjects for research for decades to come. It’s the beginning of a new era of exoplanet research. I don’t think we know everything TESS is going to accomplish. To me, the most exciting part of any mission is the unexpected result, the one that nobody saw coming.”