TESS Mission discovers new Alien Worlds

NASA has detected three new planets in a nearby star system. These 3 planets – one slightly larger than Earth and two new planets – which are not similar to those found in the solar system.

These planets fall in a varied gap of sizes of several planets and space researchers anticipate that these planets will be the most viable candidates for future study.

How were the planets detected?

• The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a space telescope which was developed using NASA’s Explorers program.
• NASA’s Explorers program aims to search for the exoplanets and it covers an area which is 400 times larger than the area covered by the previous Kepler mission.
• The TESS was established in orbit by a Falcon 9 (SpaceX) rocket in April 2018.
• The TESS has an expected life of 2-years and its primary mission is to find more than 20,000 transiting exoplanets.
• The current human understanding of the space is highly construed and we have only found just 3,800 exoplanets till date.
• The TESS became active obtaining space images on August 2018 and these images were released publicly in September 2018.
• The modern equipment onboard the TESS enable it is to efficiently study the mass, size, density, and orbit of a large cohort of small planets. Its primary area of focus will be the small rocky planets in the habitable zones of their host stars.

The TESS will provide future targets for advanced characterization by the more modern James Webb Space Telescope and other large ground-based telescopes.