NASA to launch 'planet hunter' in 2017

NASA has chosen two low-cost missions under the Astrophysics Explorer Program to launch in 2017: the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), designed to probe star-orbiting planets outside our solar system; and the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), which will examine the nature of ultradense neutron stars. 

 

The costs amount to $200 million for satellites and $55 million for the space station experiments, according to Space.com.

 

The satellite

 

Using a series of wide-field cameras, the TESS spacecraft will scan nearby stars for Earth-sized planets in the “Goldilocks” zone —the distance from the star at which they can maintain liquid water and can therefore potentially support life.

 

“TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission,” said George Ricker of MIT and principal investigator of TESS. “It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth.”

 

Just like NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which has already detected over 2,700 possible exoplanets since its launch in March 2009, the free-flying TESS will recognize these planets when they move across the face of their host stars.

 

 

The space station experiment

 

NICER will be attached to the space station; from this vantage point it will measure the variations in neutron stars’ cosmic ray emissions. Neutron stars are extremely dense collapsed remnants of stars that have already exploded.

 

Keith Gendreau of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. is NICER's principal investigator.

 

 

“With these missions we will learn about the most extreme states of matter by studying neutron stars, and we will identify many nearby star systems with rocky planets in the habitable zone for further study by telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope,” stated John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington.

 

NASA’s Explorer program has launched more than 90 missions since blasting Explorer 1 off into space in 1958. The agency’s mission remains the same: to conduct frequent, economical space investigations to better understand the nature of the universe. — TJD, GMA News