Orbital TESS - Manual

Astrophysics
TESS
Discovering Exoplanets Orbiting Nearby Stars
LEO
Mission Description
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is an Explorer-class planet finder. In the first-ever
space-borne all-sky transit survey, TESS will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants,
orbiting a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. The principal goal of the TESS mission is to
detect small planets with bright host stars in the solar neighborhood, so that detailed characterizations
of the planets and their atmospheres can be performed.
TESS will monitor more than 500,000 stars during a two year mission, searching for temporary drops in
brightness caused by planetary transits. Transits occur when a planet’s orbit carries it directly in front of
its parent star as viewed from Earth. TESS is expected to catalog more than 3,000 transiting exoplanet
candidates, including a sample of approximately 500 Earth-sized and ‘Super Earth’ planets, with radii
less than twice that of the Earth. TESS will detect small rock-and-ice planets orbiting a diverse range of
stellar types and covering a wide span of orbital periods, including rocky worlds in the habitable zones
of their host stars.
Spacecraft
The TESS mission will be based on Orbital’s LEOStar ™ -2 platform, a flexible, high-performance
spacecraft for space and Earth science, remote sensing and other applications. LEOStar-2 can
accommodate various instrument interfaces, deliver up to 2 kilowatt orbit average payload power, and
support payloads up to 500 kilograms. Performance options include redundancy, propulsion capability,
high data rate communications, and high-agility/high-accuracy pointing. TESS will be the eighth
LEOStar-2 based spacecraft built for NASA.
FACTS AT A GLANCE
Artist’s rendering of TESS in orbit (MIT image)
TESS will carry out the first space-borne
all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times
as much sky as any previous planet-
hunting mission
From its planned high-Earth orbit, TESS
will approach close enough to the Earth
for high data-downlink rates, while
remaining above the planet’s harmful
radiation belts
Mission:
Identifying candidate exoplanet
candidates for further study by the
James Webb Space Telescope and
other future telescopes
Customer:
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center