Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite which is also known as TESS, is a space telescope. It was designed by NASA. The main purpose of satellites is to search for extrasolar planets. It was launched in the year 2018 by the Falcon 9 rocket.
Highlights
It was stated that in the course of two years of major missions, TESS will eventually have detected approximately 1,250 passing exoplanets orbiting the target star and an additional 13,000 passing planets orbiting additional stars in the fields observed by TESS.
As of April 2021, TESS has identified 2,601 exoplanets. TESS’s main goal is to identify the brightest stars near Earth and search for exoplanets. TESS can study the mass, size, orbit, and density of planets. This includes small planets and rocky planets in the habitable zone of the stars. In addition, TESS finds small planets around the nearest star. TESS completed the south elevation in July 2020 and started the north elevation. TESS was launched by the organization named SpaceX.
TESS is overseen by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Seed funding is provided by Google.
Orbit and working of TESS
TESS uses the transit method to identify exoplanets. Detects a small decrease in brightness. This indicates that the planets have passed in front of them. If the dip is repeated, this means that the planet has passed those stars. The data is then validated through repeated observations.
The apogee of TESS which denotes the farthest point from the earth is almost the distance of the moon and its perigee is 1,00,000 kilometres. The resonance with the moon is 2: 1. In other words, the moon orbits once, while the earth orbits twice. This is the first time a satellite has entered such a high orbit. The name of the orbit is P / 2 because it is half the orbit of the moon.
TESS’s ground system
TESS’s ground system is distributed in eight locations in the United States. These include Orbital ATK’s Mission Operations Center, NASA’s Space Network and Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Deep Space Network for Command and Telemetry, Ames Research Center’s Scientific Processing Operations Center, MIT’s payload Operations Center and Space Flight Center, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s TESS Science Office, The Goddard Space Flight Center’s Flight Dynamics Facility, and the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.
Findings of TESS
The first observation of TESS was Comet C / 2018 N1. The first observation of an exoplanet was Pi Mensae. It is a planet like Super Earth that orbits the stars every 6 days. Discovered in the year 2018. In the month of September 2018, TESS discovered LHS 3844b. This is one of the planets known to have a short orbital period. It orbits the red dwarf LHS3844. The orbital period of the planet is 11 hours. In October 2018, TESS discovered HD202772Ab orbiting the star HD202772. It was a swollen Hot Jupiter. In addition, it is one of the rare Hot Jupiters known to humans. Located in the constellation of Capricorn. It is also the most heavily illuminated planet known to humans. It orbits the star once every 3.3 days. HD21749c was the first discovery of the Earth-sized planet TESS. It is described as “a lot of rocks”. Its diameter is 89% of the diameter of the earth. Its surface temperature is 427 degrees Celsius. Orbit the star HD 21749. The orbital period is 8 days. In July 2019, TESS pointed its camera at the northern sky. It discovered the young exoplanet DSTucAb in Tucana Horologium. Tucana Horologium is an outstanding association. This is one of the largest associations known to humans. The mission of the European Space Agency CHEOPS is to investigate DS Tuc Ab. In 2019, an exoplanet was discovered around the M-type dwarf GJ357. The exoplanet GJ357b was a hot earth. The others were GJ357c and GJ357d. The GJ 357d may have habitable conditions. In September 2019, TESS observed the first tidal disturbance event. It was named ASASSN 19bt. The TOI 700d was discovered in January 2020. This was the first Earth-sized exoplanet discovered in the habitable zone. Located in Dorado. There is also the Super Earth TOI700c and the Earth-sized planet TOI700b. This system is unique in that there is a large planet between two small planets. Four more solar planets were discovered in January 2021. They orbit the sun like the star HD108236. Of the four planets, three are subneptunes and one is super-earth. In January 2021, TESS discovered the first 6-star system. It was named TIC168789840. These stars are in three binary pairs. In May 2021, a Neptune-sized exoplanet was discovered in Vela. It was named TOI1231b.
