Sam Quinn, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) began science operations in July 2018, and over the next two years will survey most of the sky in search of small planets transiting the nearest stars, the brightness of which enables studies of planetary compositions and atmospheric properties. These will likely be the planets on which we focus our search for life through the detection of biosignature gases in the planets' atmospheres. However, TESS is not just an exoplanet mission; by monitoring the brightness variations of every object in the sky, TESS will support research at all scales, including Solar System, stellar, and extragalactic astrophysics. In this talk, I will describe the TESS mission and the science it will enable, and I will close by presenting some of the first exciting results to emerge from the mission.
Photo credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Original music by Mark C. Petersen, Loch Ness Productions. Used with permission.
Animations used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Photo credit: David Glenn
