NASA's next exoplanet-hunting spacecraft is poised for an on-time liftoff Monday (April 16). The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is ready to go, as is its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ride, mission officials said. And the weather is likely to cooperate as well. Some storms will blow through the area tonight, but they'll likely be gone by the scheduled launch time of 6:32 p.m. EDT (2232 GMT) tomorrow, said weather officer Mike McAleenan, of the U.S. Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron. There's just a 20 percent chance that Mother Nature will scuttle that liftoff, he added. The chief concern for tomorrow is strong winds.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is an upcoming NASA mission that will look for planets orbiting the brightest stars in Earth's sky. The mission will monitor at least 200,000 stars for signs of exoplanets, ranging from Earth-sized rocky worlds to huge gas giant planets. (TESS is slated to last two years, but if the mission is extended, it may look at more stars.) TESS will look at variations in the brightness of stars. If an exoplanet passes in front of a star (called a planetary transit), it blocks a portion of the light and causes the brightness to dip. The mission is expected to collect thousands of candidate exoplanets, including Earth-sized and "super-Earth sized" planets. This will help astronomers better understand the structure of solar systems outside of our Earth, and provide insights into how our own solar system formed.
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https://www.space.com/40308-nasa-tess-mission-all-systems-go-launch.html
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