{"id":77839,"date":"2018-04-16T02:23:38","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T09:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/nasas-tess-satellite-will-supercharge-search-for-nearby-earth-like-worlds"},"modified":"2018-04-16T02:23:38","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T09:23:38","slug":"nasas-tess-satellite-will-supercharge-search-for-nearby-earth-like-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/nasas-tess-satellite-will-supercharge-search-for-nearby-earth-like-worlds","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s TESS Satellite Will Supercharge Search for Nearby, Earth-Like Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On Monday, April 16, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA\u2019s new exoplanet hunter will train its sights on nearer, brighter stars than its predecessors did. If TESS lives up to scientists\u2019 predictions, it could energize our search for life in the cosmos.<\/p>\n

When the Kepler space telescope<\/a> launched in 2009, scientists didn\u2019t know what fraction of stars hosted planets. The Kepler mission was a statistical exploration looking to see how frequently planets occur around stars, Harvard astronomer David Latham told Space.com<\/a>. \u201cOne of the big surprises from Kepler was to find this whole population of planets with sizes between that of Neptune and Earth \u2014 and there aren\u2019t any in our solar system, zero \u2014 and they\u2019re everywhere out there,\u201d said Latham, who\u2019s worked on the Kepler project for nearly 20 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cKepler is what made us become aware that planets are as common as telephone poles,\u201d SETI Institute<\/a> astronomer Seth Shostak told Space.com.<\/a>\u201d But the stars that Kepler was staring at for four years \u2026 they were all somewhere between 500 and 1,500 light-years away.\u201d TESS will survey the local neighborhood for planets like Earth. [NASA\u2019s TESS Exoplanet-Hunter in Pictures<\/a>].<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, April 16, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA\u2019s new exoplanet hunter will train its sights on nearer, brighter stars than its predecessors did. If TESS lives up to scientists\u2019 predictions, it could energize our search for life in the cosmos. When the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}