NASA's TESS Satellite Will Supercharge Search for Nearby, Earth-Like Worlds

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On Monday, April 16, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will dispatch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA's new exoplanet seeker will prepare its sights on closer, brighter stars than its antecedents. On the off chance that TESS satisfies researchers' expectations, it could empower our look for life in the universe.

At the point when the Kepler space telescope propelled in 2009, researchers didn't recognize what division of stars facilitated planets. The Kepler mission was a measurable investigation hoping to perceive how every now and again planets happen around stars, Harvard cosmologist David Latham told Space.com. "One of the enormous amazements from Kepler was to locate this entire populace of planets with sizes between that of Neptune and Earth — and there aren't any in our nearby planetary group, zero — and they're wherever out there," said Latham, who's taken a shot at the Kepler venture for almost 20 years.