The search for life beyond planet Earth continues!

NASA says it plans to launch its newest planet hunter -- the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS -- on Monday, April 16.

Unlike its predecessors, TESS is the first spacecraft of its kind to search the entire sky for exoplanets that could harbor life. 

Put simply, an exoplanet is a planet located outside of our solar system.

In the above video, NASA scientist Joshua Schlieder tells our Burton Fitzsimmons they hope to literally find thousands of new exoplanets in the next two years with the help of TESS.  

"TESS monitors thousands of stars at a time using four telescopes that build up a large field of view.  And it looks for these tiny changes in brightness.  As the planet crosses in front of its star, it blocks out some of the light.  The changes in brightness are very, very small, less than one percent.  But in doing so, we can understand the size of the planet and what kind of orbit it has around the star, how long it takes the planet to orbit around its star," says Schlieder.

The space agency said TESS will provide a general "road map" for future, follow-up study by other NASA telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope.

Stay tuned to Spectrum News for coverage of the TESS launch.

 

For more information:
NASA TESS launch page
TESS Exoplanet Mission page