NASA is planning to launch a new, planet-hunting satellite on April 16, the agency announced Thursday in a press release.
The mission of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite — or TESS, for short — is to find thousands of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. NASA has discovered and studied thousands of these planets over the last 10 years. One of the systems it discovered, the TRAPPIST-1 system, could have the ingredients to support life, NASA says.
TESS is expected to add thousands more planets to its growing list during its two-year mission, looking at the nearest and brightest stars in our galaxy to see if their are worlds hiding in their light.
NASA is hoping TESS will find promising planets that telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope or the future James Webb Space Telescope could look at in more detail to determine what their atmospheres are made of and whether they could potentially support life.
