NASA TESS Observatory Will Hunt For Alien Life On "Super-Earth" Exoplanets

An anonymous reader writes "Kepler may be down, but now NASA has another planet-hunting tool in mind. The space agency is preparing the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) observatory in order to follow in Kepler's footsteps. NASA has been searching for alien planets for several years now. Learning about strange exoplanets such as enormous, hot 'Jupiters' and 'rogue planets' that actually cruise through space without a parent star certainly adds to the body of research concerning our universe. Yet what scientists are really interested in are the Earth-like planets that may hold the potential for life."

Comments

Never a serious activity

[OhANameWhatName]

Extra-terrestrial life has been visiting the earth for 10's if not 100's of thousands of years. What do you think the ancient Hindu scrolls talk about?

In the fifties, there were thousands of reliable documented UFO sightings covered up by the US government with such ridiculous explanations as 'moonlight reflecting off of swamp gas'. Google up project blue book. We all know about the Roswell stories and there and hundreds of similar reliable situations throughout the last 50 years. Given that we know that extra-terrestrial life is and has been visiting the earth, what is with NASA still launching vessels into orbit to 'search' for extra-terrestrial beings?

It's a thinly veiled ruse to fool an unsuspecting public into believing that the US government's mis-information campaign is the truth.

Let's turn the tide and start a terrible wave of truth here. I've seen extra-terrestrial craft in the skies, how about you?

Take the red pill.

Re:Never a serious activity

[the gnat]

there were thousands of reliable documented UFO sightings covered up by the US government with such ridiculous explanations as 'moonlight reflecting off of swamp gas'

Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. You're testing supersonic spy planes in an era where our largest adversary had successfully stolen nuclear weapons research from us, and you're trying to stop the local yokels from asking too many questions about the unimaginably fast, jet-black craft that keep whooshing overhead. What do you tell them that will shut them up, without saying "we're testing top-secret spy planes that will overfly the Soviet Union"?

If extraterrestrials really did visit Earth as often (and for as long) as you claim, btw, there would be actual hard evidence. There is none. The simplest explanation is that a) people freak out when confronted with rapid technological change, and b) the human brain is a superb pattern-finding machine - so good that it often finds patterns where none exist. And if we're going to treat ancient Hindu scrolls as reliable documentary evidence, why not just take the Book of Genesis at face value too, and have the government stop funding evolution research? (Or medical research, for that matter - clearly divine intervention can cure disease more effectively than modern medicine.)

Re:No star?

[Nyder]

Are they're looking for life on planets not warmed by a star?
Or just hoping to find an alien Moonbase Alpha?

They just mentioned those no star planets as an example of how cool it is out in space, but they will be looking for earth like planets in the habitable zone, which means a planet that orbits a star/sun.

Re:No star?

[icebike]

From what I understand, the geothermal core is essential for our survival; without it, the heat derived from the Sun isn't capable of being able to appropriately compensate in recreating the conditions for our type of life forms.

Perhaps on THIS planet the core's heat is necessary, but that certainly wouldn't hold for a planet somewhat closer to the sun.
There must be some proximity where the star's warmth is just goldilocks right.

There are far too many hard and fast rules for habitability imposed by people who do nothing but speculate, with very little imagination.

We need a moon,
We need a magnetic field.
We need a molten core.

The list goes on.

Look, its no surprise that earth is the perfect planet for humans, but that doesn't mean everything else has to be
exactly the same. We don't all live on the African savanna, even though Groog probably insisted to Ooook that
people could never live anywhere but within sight of one specific banyan tree.