TESS

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has observed a gigantic black hole ripping apart a star in a distant galaxy.

NASA’s TESS mission has been very busy lately, making many exoplanet discoveries. Now, the productive little satellite has made another important discovery – the closest super-Earth that’s potentially habitable.

NASA's TESS probe is halfway through its two-year primary mission and has completed its survey of the southern sky in its search for extrasolar planets. According to the space agency, the unmanned telescope has discovered 21 confirmed exoplanets and 850 candidates for further study.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite was built to search for new planets, but astronomers at Ohio State found it could also observe supernovas created by exploding white dwarf stars. This means we might soon have a better idea about why they explode, and what they leave behind.

Three new, roughly Earth-sized exoplanets have been found orbiting a nearby star. Named L 98-59b, c and d, the small worlds were spotted by NASA’s TESS, as part of a larger haul of data that finally brings the total tally past the milestone of 4,000 exoplanets discovered to date.

Another 18 exoplanets have been added to the haul, but the difference this time is that all of them are roughly Earth-sized – much smaller than the Neptune-sized average found so far. The discovery was made in old data, using a new and more sensitive algorithm.

A team of astronomers led by MIT has confirmed that NASA's unmanned Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)​ space telescope has discovered its first Earth-sized exoplanet. Called HD 21749c, it orbits the main-sequence star HD 21749, 52 light years away from Earth.

A new exoplanet hunting tool​ has been installed onto an Australian telescope. Dubbed Veloce, the instrument looks out for the wobble of a star caused by the gravitational tug of orbiting planets, and it specializes in red dwarfs, the most common type of star in the universe.

NASA today shared the first science image captured by its TESS space telescope, providing researchers with plenty of inspiration in their search for other worlds that might resemble our own.​

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) did a bit of limbering up before commencing its science operations on July 25, 2018. The unmanned space telescope demonstrated what it could do by snapping a series of images capturing the motion of a comet over the course of 17 hours.​​

NASA's next-generation exoplanet hunter began its science mission this week. On July 25, TESS got to work on its two-year whole-sky survey to seek out planets outside our solar system by looking at the nearest and brightest stars for signs of changes in their brightness.

The TESS mission took its first image as it completed a dramatic lunar flyby this week. On May 17, 2018, the next-generation planet hunter passed within 5,000 mi (8,000 km) of the Moon to execute a slingshot maneuver that hurled it towards its final orbit.x