TESS

SpaceX has secured an $87m contract from Nasa to provide launch services for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission.

Under the contract, SpaceX will be responsible for spacecraft processing, payload integration, tracking, data and telemetry, and other launch support requirements.

The TESS is scheduled for launch on-board a Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in August 2017.

The TESS mission is designed to identify transiting exoplanets orbiting nearby bright stars for characterisation by the James Webb Space Telescope, as well as other ground-based and space-based telescopes.

"The spacecraft will monitor hundreds of thousands of stars to detect a large sample of exoplanets."

As part of a three-year mission, the spacecraft will monitor hundreds of thousands of stars to detect a large sample of exoplanets.

Data accumulated will help determine Earth-sized and super-Earth-sized planets in the vicinity of the solar system.

The TESS is built by Orbital Sciences based on its LEOStar-2 spacecraft platform.

It will be the eighth LEOStar-2 based spacecraft for Nasa, and complements SORCE, GALEX, AIM, NuSTAR and OCO-2 spacecraft.

Launch of TESS will be overseen by Launch Services Programme team at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the mission is managed by Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, US.

Image: An artistic view of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Photo: courtesy of Nasa.