NASA Launches TESS the Exoplanet Hunter
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, will soon join NASA’s fleet of exoplanet-hunters that, so far, includes the Kepler, Hubble, and the Spitzer Space Telescopes. TESS was launched at 2251 UTC on April 18, 2018, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The space observatory is expected to survey about 85% of […]
Calling ET: NASA Expands Search for Alien Life
The search for life beyond our own solar system has taken a major step forward with a new interdisciplinary research coalition devoted to the search for life in the cosmos. Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) will be made up of research teams from several NASA facilities, 10 U.S. universities and two research institutions, according […]
Ground-Based Telescope Observes Exoplanet Transiting Bright Star
For the first time, an international team of astronomers has used a ground-based telescope to detect and observe the transit of a planet in front of a Sun-like star outside of our own solar system. Until now, only space-based telescopes were capable of detecting the transits of exoplanets as they passed by bright stars. Distortions […]