Tess – Orbital TESS User Manual
Page 2
TESS
Orbital Sciences Corporation
45101 Warp Drive
•
Dulles, Virginia 20166
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www.orbital.com
©2014 Orbital Sciences Corporation
FS011_13_2998
Specifications
Spacecraft
Launch Mass:
350 kg (772 lb.)
Redundancy: Selective
Solar Arrays:
400 W (EoL) Two wing solar array, fixed and
articulating modes
Stabilization:
3-Axis via 4 Hydrazine thrusters, Four wheel
fine-pointing ACS
Orbit:
17 Earth-radii perigee, 59 Earth-radii apogee
Mission Life:
Two Years
Launch
Launch Vehicle:
Antares, Falcon 9, Taurus XL, Athena IIc, or
Athena
Launch Site:
Kennedy Space Center or Wallops Flight
Facility
Date:
2017
Instrument
The TESS instrument consists of four wide field-of-view CCD cameras.
The CCDs, manufactured at the MIT Lincoln Lab, are extremely efficient
for photon detection and are a derivative of silicon CCDs previously
developed for space-based x-ray missions including NASA's Chandra
X-ray observatory and several Japanese missions.
Mission Partners
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Mission management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Principal investigator Dr. George Ricker, instrument development
Orbital Sciences Corporation
Spacecraft development, observatory integration and testing
Additional Partners
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI)
and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, NASA’s Ames Research Center, the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, The Aerospace
Corporation, and the Space Telescope Science Institute.