(Popular Mechanics) – Exoplanet enthusiasts, rejoice! This week, scientists revealed a series of new discoveries made by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The telescope has spotted a number of strange new worlds circling star systems near and far, the scientists announced at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Hawaii.
From Tatooine-like systems to habitable worlds to starry eclipses, TESS has been busy uncovering the universe’s oddities since launching in 2018. A follow-up to the prolific Kepler mission, which discovered about 70 percent of the approximately 4,000 exoplanets known to science today, TESS is scheduled to scan 200,00o of the night’s brightest stars for insight into their solar systems. It’s expected to conduct this survey over the course of two years, focusing on small chunks of the night sky at a time.
The satellite, which has four cameras that snap pictures once every 30 minutes, has a leg up on Kepler, and can study stars that are 30 to 100 times brighter. Ultimately, scientists hope the project will help us understand the composition of different solar systems, uncover mysteries about potentially habitable worlds, and unlock secrets about life elsewhere in the universe. FULL REPORT
