NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), is a space mission designed to discover and study exoplanets orbiting stars outside our solar system. Launched on April 18, 2018, TESS is revolutionizing our understanding of exoplanets by searching for these distant worlds in a systematic and comprehensive manner.
TESS employs a unique approach, using four wide-field cameras to monitor nearly the entire sky, divided into 26 sectors. It continuously observes the brightness of thousands of stars, looking for subtle dips in light caused by exoplanets passing in front of their host stars, a phenomenon known as transits.
One of TESS's primary goals is to identify exoplanets that are relatively close to Earth in size and temperature, making them prime candidates for follow-up observations by other telescopes to characterize their atmospheres and potential habitability.
