We received news that NASA’s TESS mission completed its primary mission on July 4th. TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, has surveyed almost 75% of the sky during this first two years of operation. The satellite, for those unfamiliar, uses changes in the brightness of stars to detect the transit of planets across the surface of those stars. So far, scientists have found 66 confirmed exoplanets and over 2,100 candidate exoplanets in the data. 

TESS has now entered into the extended portion of its mission, turning to finish surveying the southern sky through September 2022. Several improvements have been made as to how the satellite collects and processes data. Per the press release, “Its cameras now capture a full image every 10 minutes, three times faster than during the primary mission. A new fast mode allows the brightness of thousands of stars to be measured every 20 seconds, along with the previous method of collecting these observations from tens of thousands of stars every two minutes. The faster measurements will allow TESS to better resolve brightness changes caused by stellar oscillations and to capture explosive flares from active stars in greater detail.”

Congratulations, TESS. We will continue to expect great results.

More Information

NASA Goddard press release