Author Topic: NASA - Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite ( TESS ) updates (Read 75561 times)

Alpha_Centauri · « **Reply #80 on:** 07/04/2018 03:50 pm »

Quote from: Svetoslav on 07/04/2018 08:47 am

I do hope we won't have another Kepler debacle. I hope a reasonable period will be decided, and then the data will be distributed to 3rd parties and the public.

There is a difference between early results released by the team and when the data will be publicly available. The data won't be public until the beginning of next year.

Star One · « **Reply #81 on:** 07/04/2018 07:20 pm »

Quote from: Alpha_Centauri on 07/04/2018 03:50 pm

Quote from: Svetoslav on 07/04/2018 08:47 am
I do hope we won't have another Kepler debacle. I hope a reasonable period will be decided, and then the data will be distributed to 3rd parties and the public.

There is a difference between early results released by the team and when the data will be publicly available. The data won't be public until the beginning of next year.

That’s not was said previously. It was stated results would be available at the end of this year.

Alpha_Centauri · « **Reply #82 on:** 07/04/2018 09:09 pm »

The last official statement was Jan 2019. But regardless whether it's December/January the point is it's still many months away.

Dao Angkan · « **Reply #83 on:** 07/05/2018 10:46 pm »

TESS is supposed to release data quickly for ground based RV follow up. Recent papers from RV surveys that I've read talk about December as the first release. No big deal if it doesn't happen until the next month (anyway, let the staff have a holiday at that time of year) Releases should be regular from then.

redliox · « **Reply #84 on:** 07/06/2018 01:04 am »

Quote from: Dao Angkan on 07/05/2018 10:46 pm

TESS is supposed to release data quickly for ground based RV follow up. Recent papers from RV surveys that I've read talk about December as the first release. No big deal if it doesn't happen until the next month (anyway, let the staff have a holiday at that time of year) Releases should be regular from then.

*shrugs* I'm willing to wait for decent results. TESS is going to take, what was it, at least 2 years for its survey, if not longer? Likewise the Kepler team didn't want to release false positives, and some time was spent waiting for their data. For now all I want is to know TESS is in its proper orbit and beginning aforementioned survey.

Svetoslav · « **Reply #85 on:** 07/10/2018 09:01 pm »

Hmm... is there something wrong with TESS?

Via Eric Berger: The @NASA_TESS mission has been awfully quiet of late. I inquired today if anything was wrong. The totality of the reply I received is thus:

"NASA will be issuing an update on TESS tomorrow (Wednesday) by noon EDT. I will send you a link when it’s live."

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1016785065311956992

rory · « **Reply #86 on:** 07/10/2018 10:40 pm »

Seems likely they're just releasing those embargoed results from Exoplanets II.

Quote from: Cesar Baima on Twitter

An astronomer who is my source and is working with Tess data posted yesterday this photo of preliminary results from the mission in a seminar yesterday, so I guess everything is OK...

https://twitter.com/SoCiencia/status/1016807170170654721

paolozamparutti · « **Reply #87 on:** 07/11/2018 05:56 am »

Quote from: Svetoslav on 07/10/2018 09:01 pm

Hmm... is there something wrong with TESS?

Via Eric Berger: The @NASA_TESS mission has been awfully quiet of late. I inquired today if anything was wrong. The totality of the reply I received is thus:

"NASA will be issuing an update on TESS tomorrow (Wednesday) by noon EDT. I will send you a link when it’s live."

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1016785065311956992

academics who have access to the Tess mailing list assure me everything is ok

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #88 on:** 07/11/2018 04:40 pm »

Quote

July 11, 2018
NASA’s TESS Spacecraft Continues Testing Prior to First Observations

After a successful launch on April 18, 2018, NASA’s newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is currently undergoing a series of commissioning tests before it begins searching for planets. The TESS team has reported that the spacecraft and cameras are in good health, and the spacecraft has successfully reached its final science orbit. The team continues to conduct tests in order to optimize spacecraft performance with a goal of beginning science at the end of July.

Every new mission goes through a commissioning period of testing and adjustments before beginning science operations. This serves to test how the spacecraft and its instruments are performing and determines whether any changes need to be made before the mission starts observations.

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Dr. George Ricker of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research serves as principal investigator for the mission. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.

For the latest updates on TESS, visit nasa.gov/tess.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-s-tess-spacecraft-continues-testing-prior-to-first-observations

Alpha_Centauri · « **Reply #89 on:** 07/27/2018 05:14 pm »

And so it begins.

https://tess.mit.edu/news/nasas-tess-spacecraft-starts-science-operations/

Quote

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has started its search for planets around nearby stars, officially beginning science operations on July 25, 2018. TESS is expected to transmit its first series of science data back to Earth in August, and thereafter periodically every 13.5 days, once per orbit, as the spacecraft makes it closest approach to Earth. The TESS Science Team will begin searching the data for new planets immediately after the first series arrives.

Targeteer · « **Reply #90 on:** 07/28/2018 04:29 am »

TESS has a Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/NASATESS/?hc_ref=ARTUWXqaI5z32KvsSpcQ0bCsmNCuF8QBbGnItRXu82AZmNo0qsaxaaOd15QbMDVtld8&fref=nf

Dao Angkan · « **Reply #91 on:** 07/28/2018 11:20 pm »

Commissioning took a month longer than initially planned, which has pushed the first public data release of the first four months data back from December to early 2019 (as mentioned several posts back). Hoping that the science team can try to find a way to release the data early.

quasarquantum · « **Reply #92 on:** 08/14/2018 09:46 am »

Data of the first science orbit has been downlinked on 8. August. TESS caught a comet

https://tess.mit.edu/news/catching-a-comet-how-the-tess-science-office-found-c-2018-n1/

Nomadd · « **Reply #93 on:** 08/24/2018 06:58 pm »

I had a chance to ask Jeff Volosin about comparing Kepler transits with TESS versions of the same planet to help calibrate analysis of both and he said NASA declined because they wanted to keep TESS on the southern hemisphere for now.
Next year they should have a chance to get some Kepler targets with TESS for comparison.

theinternetftw · « **Reply #94 on:** 08/25/2018 02:08 am »

Quote from: Nomadd on 08/24/2018 06:58 pm

I had a chance to ask Jeff Volosin about comparing Kepler transits with TESS versions of the same planet to help calibrate analysis of both and he said NASA declined because they wanted to keep TESS on the southern hemisphere for now.
Next year they should have a chance to get some Kepler targets with TESS for comparison.

He also said that:

* The quality of imagery has been much better than expected: the science they'd expected to be reserved for 20,000 stars they'd specially selected per section instead should be doable on just about any star visible in the field of view.

* The one-month delay on full science ops was for a pointing problem (since resolved). I think he said this was from unexpected jitter when using the reaction wheels.

* Even having to dump momentum from the reaction wheels three times as often (three times per orbit instead of once), he expects to have over 100 years of propellant reserves. Which is nice. The numbers here are 40kg of propellant (thanks to very good insertion ops), 10 grams of propellant per momentum dump maneuver.

I'd be interested to know if TESS is using ceramic bearings in its reaction wheels, which might help it get a little closer to that hundred years

Edit: Remembered a bit more:

* First public data release in ~2 months

* The TESS project has funding set aside to do radial velocity from ground telescopes as a follow-on to planet discovery

* TESS images 24x90 degrees of sky at 0.5fps for ~28 days per section. Volosin expects that to be handy for a lot of folks. E.g. he expects to record a supernova from start to finish at 0.5fps.

* Volosin seems totally in favor of looking in certain directions for much longer than 28 days, after the two-year survey mission is over. (see some possible extended missions on pages 1-3 of this great PDF)

Quagga · « **Reply #95 on:** 08/25/2018 09:50 am »

Quote from: theinternetftw on 08/25/2018 02:08 am

* The quality of imagery has been much better than expected: the science they'd expected to be reserved for 20,000 stars they'd specially selected per section instead should be doable on just about any star visible in the field of view.

* Even having to dump momentum from the reaction wheels three times as often (three times per orbit instead of once), he expects to have over 100 years of propellant reserves. Which is nice. The numbers here are 40kg of propellant (thanks to very good insertion ops), 10 grams of propellant per momentum dump maneuver.

These are great news. What effect does this have on the expected planet yield?

Edit: Also, does this mean TESS will be more sensitive towards smaller planets in wider orbits?

deruch · « **Reply #96 on:** 09/01/2018 06:03 pm »

Quote from: theinternetftw on 08/25/2018 02:08 am

* TESS images 24x90 degrees of sky at 0.5fps for ~28 days per section. Volosin expects that to be handy for a lot of folks. E.g. he expects to record a supernova from start to finish at 0.5fps.

So far as I understand it, that's not how their cameras/sampling work. Your Field of View description is close enough (it's actually 24x96 deg.) as is the pointing (~28 days/section). But the imaging rates are way off. TESS's cameras do take images at 0.5fps--or rather they have a 2 second exposure time--but then those images are stacked and summed. For the targeted investigation of stars, that summing takes 60 frames (taken over 120 seconds) sums the image then has pre-selected postage stamps-which will include the areas around targeted stars-cut out. It's those postage stamps which are saved. For the full FOV images, TESS stacks and sums the full 900 frames taken over 30 minutes but then saves the whole image instead of only the targeted parts. So, while the cameras are operating at 0.5fps, the actual images that are being saved/transmitted are more like 0.5 images/minute or 2 images/hour (only I don't know how exactly to describe the stacked and summed images). TESS is most likely to catch a supernova in the full field images. To catch one in the background of one of the postage stamps would be extremely lucky. So, the 2 images/hour is really the best bet.

The image on their Goddard mission page explains it better:
https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/tess/operations.html#time-sampling

Dao Angkan · « **Reply #97 on:** 09/01/2018 07:50 pm »

From IAU 2018 General Assembly via Twitter;

jebbo · « **Reply #98 on:** 09/03/2018 09:43 am »

Quote from: deruch on 09/01/2018 06:03 pm

So far as I understand it, that's not how their cameras/sampling work.

Yup. Your description is correct ... short cadence image every 2 minutes; FFI every 30 minutes.

Images are downlinked every 14 days, which limits the usefulness as a supernova alert mechanism.

--- Tony

deruch · « **Reply #99 on:** 09/03/2018 05:09 pm »

Quote from: jebbo on 09/03/2018 09:43 am

Quote from: deruch on 09/01/2018 06:03 pm
So far as I understand it, that's not how their cameras/sampling work.

Yup. Your description is correct ... short cadence image every 2 minutes; FFI every 30 minutes.

Images are downlinked every 14 days, which limits the usefulness as a supernova alert mechanism.

--- Tony

I don't think anyone was thinking of using them as an alert mechanism. But they will very likely catch and document one with saved images every 30 minutes from the Full Frame Images (FFI). My struggle is how to differentiate between what TESS is actually doing and just saying that they'll take 1 FFI picture every 30 minutes. Because TESS's FFIs are really a combined image where they take the 900 frames shot over those 30 minutes (each frame shot over a 2 second exposure time), sum them up into a single image and then just store that for later transmission. So, the cameras are capturing the supernova progression at 0.5 fps, but then through the summing action they lose that really fine time resolution. Regardless, the images of a developing supernova at a 30 minute cadence will be really cool. And if they somehow get lucky enough to see one in the background of the postage stamps--and thereby have images every 2 minutes--that would be awesome.