LIVE: SpaceX Falcon 9 : TESS : April 18, 2018 : Updates

[Steven Pietrobon]

Now flying over the Pacific ocean.

[Steven Pietrobon]

Over to NASA Edge. Had several rounds of applause.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Welcome to the DSN @NASA_TESS! We've got DATA from the spacecraft! eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

https://twitter.com/shannonmstirone/status/986753133102612480

[catdlr]

Perhaps news later on second stage experimental reentry?

[Steven Pietrobon]

"Wow! Are we excited?!"

Only worked one minor item during count.

[Rocket Science]

Expecting flyby on May 15-16th...

[pb2000]

NASA coverage wrapping up

[Steven Pietrobon]

Wrapping up coverage. Launch replays next.

[Michael Baylor]

Tim Dunn of NASA LSP: The Falcon 9 continues to demonstrate what a reliable ride it has become. It was the second LSP launch on a Falcon 9. To see all the hard work from LSP throughout the certification process [of Falcon 9] rewarded means so much.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Liftoff of SpaceX Falcon 9 with TESS. #spacex #falcon9

https://twitter.com/_tomcross_/status/986755916405067776

[Steven Pietrobon]

First set of replays.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Thank you for joining us for today's successful launch of #Falcon9 🚀, lifting #TESS 🛰 up to hunt for #exoplanets around the ✨ visible from our Solar System. We hope you enjoyed this beautiful launch for science!

https://twitter.com/nasa_lsp/status/986760893156519936

[Steven Pietrobon]

End of NASA coverage.

[Mapperuo]

[MATTBLAK]

Thanks for putting up the replays. Darn; I missed the live one

[redliox]

TESS separation!!!

TESS is on its way to a 17 May lunar flyby and entry into its final science orbit, which it will occur on 17 June.

YAY!  In time for my birthday! 

"Wow! Are we excited?!"

Very!

[Elthiryel]

https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/986778115371347968?s=21

Jonathan McDowell @planet4589

The TESS Falcon 9 second stage has completed its escape burn; it will enter an 0.82 x 1.0 AU x 0.3 deg solar orbit on Apr 27

[jacqmans]

April 19, 2018
RELEASE 18-026

NASA Planet Hunter on Its Way to Orbit
 
 
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched on the first-of-its-kind mission to find worlds beyond our solar system, including some that could support life.

TESS, which is expected to find thousands of new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, lifted off at 6:51 p.m. EDT Wednesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. At 7:53 p.m., the twin solar arrays that will power the spacecraft successfully deployed.

“We are thrilled TESS is on its way to help us discover worlds we have yet to imagine, worlds that could possibly be habitable, or harbor life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “With missions like the James Webb Space Telescope to help us study the details of these planets, we are ever the closer to discovering whether we are alone in the universe.”

Over the course of several weeks, TESS will use six thruster burns to travel in a series of progressively elongated orbits to reach the Moon, which will provide a gravitational assist so that TESS can transfer into its 13.7-day final science orbit around Earth. After approximately 60 days of check-out and instrument testing, the spacecraft will begin its work.

“One critical piece for the science return of TESS is the high data rate associated with its orbit,” said George Ricker, TESS principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research in Cambridge. “Each time the spacecraft passes close to Earth, it will transmit full-frame images taken with the cameras. That’s one of the unique things TESS brings that was not possible before.”

For this two-year survey mission, scientists divided the sky into 26 sectors. TESS will use four unique wide-field cameras to map 13 sectors encompassing the southern sky during its first year of observations and 13 sectors of the northern sky during the second year, altogether covering 85 percent of the sky.

TESS will be watching for phenomena called transits. A transit occurs when a planet passes in front of its star from the observer’s perspective, causing a periodic and regular dip in the star’s brightness. More than 78 percent of the approximately 3,700 confirmed exoplanets have been found using transits.

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft found more than 2,600 exoplanets, most orbiting faint stars between 300 and 3,000 light-years from Earth, using this same method of watching for transits. TESS will focus on stars between 30 and 300 light-years away and 30 to 100 times brighter than Kepler’s targets.

The brightness of these target stars will allow researchers to use spectroscopy, the study of the absorption and emission of light, to determine a planet’s mass, density and atmospheric composition. Water, and other key molecules, in its atmosphere can give us hints about a planets’ capacity to harbor life.

“The targets TESS finds are going to be fantastic subjects for research for decades to come,” said Stephen Rinehart, TESS project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s the beginning of a new era of exoplanet research.”

Through the TESS Guest Investigator Program, the worldwide scientific community will be able to conduct research beyond TESS’s core mission in areas ranging from exoplanet characterization to stellar astrophysics, distant galaxies and solar system science.

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT and managed by Goddard. George Ricker, of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, serves as principal investigator for the mission. TESS’s four wide-field cameras were developed by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. Additional partners include Orbital ATK, NASA’s Ames Research Center, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the Space Telescope Science Institute. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.

For more information on TESS, go to:

https://www.nasa.gov/tess

[jacqmans]

Orbital ATK-Built Planet-Hunting Satellite Successfully Deployed for NASA

TESS Satellite to Search for Nearby Extra-Solar Planets on Multi-Year Mission

Company Delivers 31st Science Spacecraft for NASA’s Research Programs

Dulles, Virginia 18 April 2018 – Orbital ATK (NYSE: OA), a global leader in aerospace and defense technologies, announced that the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), built by the company for NASA, was successfully launched today aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. As the first-ever exoplanet satellite to perform a survey of the entire sky, TESS will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to Jupiter-sized, orbiting a wide range of stellar types and in various orbital regimes. The principal goal of the TESS mission is to use four wide-field cameras to detect small planets around bright host stars in the solar neighborhood so that detailed characterizations of the planets and their atmospheres can be performed.

Liftoff occurred at 6:51 p.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The satellite separated successfully from the launch vehicle 49 minutes into the mission. Orbital ATK completed the satellite’s post-launch health checks and configuration activities in preparation for a series of in-space maneuvers, including a lunar gravitational assist, to reach its targeted highly-elliptical orbit. Once in-orbit testing has been completed, TESS will begin its initial two-year mission approximately 60 days after launch.

“The data from our first tests show TESS is in good health and performing as expected early in its mission,” said Steve Krein, Vice President of Science and Environmental Satellite Programs at Orbital ATK. “TESS adds to our growing list of successful scientific space missions that have helped us study the Earth and Sun, explore the solar system, and probe the mysteries of the universe. This successful launch marks the 31st science spacecraft we have developed and built for NASA over the last 35 years, and continues to demonstrate Orbital ATK’s expertise in delivering the high-quality satellites our customers expect.”

Orbital ATK has a rich history of designing and manufacturing small space science satellites. From a small, low-cost astrophysics mission like GALEX, used to explore the origin and evolution of galaxies and stars, to Earth-imaging satellites such as the Landsat series, which have been monitoring surface changes for over 45 years, to the Dawn spacecraft, the first deep-space mission to orbit two interplanetary bodies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the company’s robust spacecraft platforms and comprehensive engineering know-how have enabled many of these satellites to far exceed their design lifetimes.

TESS was built at Orbital ATK’s Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Dulles, Virginia and is based on the company’s LEOStar-2™ bus, a flight-proven and flexible satellite platform that accommodates a wide variety of missions. Continuing the company’s legacy for delivering high-performance science and environmental spacecraft, several similar satellites are now in production for upcoming NASA missions that include the ICON heliophysics explorer, also built on a LEOStar-2 platform, as well as the Earth science ICESAT-2 and Landsat-9 satellites and the JPSS-2 weather spacecraft which use the larger LEOStar-3™ bus.

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and managed by the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.

[jacqmans]

Launch as seen from Orlando airport, photo taken by: G. v/d Haar