Space UpClose: NASA TESS Exoplanet Hunter Poised for Launch to Discover New Habitable Worlds: Watch Live April 16

Up close view of NASA TESS exoplanet hunter encapsulated inside the nose cone atop SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket poised for liftoff from Space Launch Complex-40 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL, on April 16 at 6:32 pm EDT. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com

Ken Kremer -- SpaceUpClose.com -- 16 April 2018

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – NASA’s TESS exoplanet hunter is poised for launch from the Florida Space Coast today, Monday April 16 on an inspiring mission to discover new Earth like habitable worlds beyond our Solar System.

TESS will help answer the biggest question of them all – ‘Are We Alone in the Universe?’

TESS is scheduled to blast off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 6:32 p.m. EDT Monday, April 16 from seaside Space Launch Complex-40 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Today’s launch window lasts only a very short 30 seconds.

The goal of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is to search for new Earth’s that could potentially support life.

The TESS spacecraft and SpaceX Falcon 9 carrier rocket passed the Launch Readiness Review (LRR) yesterday, Sunday, April 15, and are on target for a sunset liftoff that is sure to offer spectacular views.

TESS is encapsulated inside the payload fairing.

The integrated rocket and payload were rolled out to pad 41 early today.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and NASA TESS exoplanet hunter poised for liftoff from Space Launch Complex-40 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL, on April 16 at 6:32 pm EDT. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com

Check out our gallery of up close images taken today during the media remote camera setup.

If you can’t personally be here to witness the launch in Florida, you can always watch NASA’s live coverage on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

The NASA TESS launch coverage will be broadcast on NASA TV beginning at 6 p.m. Apr. 16 with additional commentary on the NASA launch blog.

SpaceX will also offer their own live webcast beginning approximately 15 minutes before launch at about 6:15 p.m. EDT.

You can watch the launch live at NASA TV at - http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

You can also watch the launch live at SpaceX hosted Webcast at - spacex.com/webcast

TESS is charged with searching for and discovering new Earth and Super Earth sized planets beyond our Solar System that orbit their host stars inside the habitable zones that offer conditions conducive to the origin and evolution of life.

During an initial 2 year long mission, TESS will gradually sweep across the entire sky and conduct a full sky survey by monitoring and investigating over 200,000 of the nearest and brightest stars to search for planets outside our solar system.

“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 (MIT) Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research in Cambridge, which is leading the mission.

“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.”

TESS is NASA’s second exoplanet mission and a follow up to the hugely successful Kepler probe which discovered over 2300 exoplanets of all sizes.

To carry out its daunting task, the spacecraft is equipped with 4 identical wide-field science cameras. Their combined field of view will enable the spacecraft to image some 85% of the entire sky during the full sky survey over the first two years.

Scientists plumbing the data gathered by TESS hope to discover on the order of 300 to 500 Earths and Super Earths alone, orbiting in their habitable zones compared to a dozen or so by Kepler.

TESS observations will yield the orbits and sizes of these exoplanets. They will also provide the specific targets for follow up high resolution investigations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and other telescopes to determine the exoplanets masses, compositions and atmospheric constituents.

In turn researchers will use these observations to determine if any of the newly discovered Earths and Super earths and actually Earth like possessing water, oxygen and carbon based molecules for example that can potentially support life.

How will TESS conduct the full sky survey? The sky has been subdivided into 26 observing sectors that basically equate to tileing the sky piece by piece - much like covering your kitchen floor with tiles.

TESS will map the sky one tile at a time by pointing the four cameras to discrete sectors of the sky and then combining them into an overarching panorama of the Universe encircling Earth.

The sky has been divided into 2 hemispheres – southern and northern.

Each hemisphere has been divided into 13 sectors that will be observed one by one. The southern sky of 13 sectors will be imaged initially over the first year, followed by the northern sky of 13 sectors over the second year.

Each of the cameras is equipped with four 16.8 megapixel CCD’s and a seven element optical system.

The cameras are located on the top of the spacecraft inside a protective sunshade to shield the instruments.

TESS will observe each sky sector tile for approximately 28 days of continuous observations.

Each sky tile from a single camera measures 24 degrees by 24 degrees. The 4 cameras combine to simultaneously cover a sector of 24 x 96 degrees.

TESS is the first space science mission launched by SpaceX for NASA.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 will deliver TESS to a highly elliptical Earth orbit never used before by a science mission, Ricker said at the media briefing.

TESS will orbit Earth in 13.7 days in a 2:1 resonance orbit with the moon. The moon orbits earth every 28 days.

The TESS science orbit is extremely stable as a result, thus requiring minimal fuel to maintain. The spacecraft is loaded with enough propellants to continue its observations for 20 years if all goes well with the spacecraft systems.

“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 in Greenbelt, Maryland, which manages the mission. “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.”

The $337 million spacecraft was built by prime contractor Orbital ATK.

The kitchen table sized probe weighs 770 pounds (350 g) and measures 12 x 4 x 5 ft (3.7 x 1.2 x 1.5 m).

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT and managed by Goddard. George Ricker, of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, serves as principal investigator for the mission. TESS’s four wide-field cameras were developed by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. Additional partners include Orbital ATK, NASA’s Ames Research Center, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the Space Telescope Science Institute. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.

Watch for Ken’s continuing onsite coverage of NASA’s TESS, SpaceX, ULA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital ATK and more space and mission reports direct from the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

Stay tuned here for Ken's continuing Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news: www.kenkremer.com –www.spaceupclose.com – twitter @ken_kremer - ken at kenkremer.com

Monday, April 16, 2018

NASA TESS Exoplanet Hunter Poised for Launch to Discover New Habitable Worlds: Watch Live April 16

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