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NASA Planet-Hunter Set For Launch (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the next-frontier dept.

The US space agency is about to launch a telescope that should find thousands of planets beyond our Solar System. From a report: The Tess mission will go up on a SpaceX's Falcon rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida and survey nearly the entire sky over the course of the next two years. It will stare at stars, hoping to catch the dip in brightness as their faces are traversed by orbiting worlds. Tess will build a catalogue of nearby, bright stars and their planets that other telescopes can then follow up. Key among these will be the successor to Hubble -- the James Webb space observatory, due in orbit from 2020. Its powerful vision will have the capability to analyse the atmospheres of some of Tess's new worlds, to look for gases that might hint at the presence of life.

James Webb will "tease out the chemical compositions of those atmospheres and look for whatever's there," said Paul Hertz, the astrophysics director at Nasa. "People are very interested in looking for, what on Earth, are bio-signatures, such as methane, carbon dioxide, water vapour and oxygen." Tess follows in the footsteps of Kepler, a groundbreaking space telescope launched in 2009. It also used the "transit technique" to confirm more than 2,000 so-called exoplanets. But Kepler, for its primary mission at least, only looked at a very small patch of sky, and many of its discoveries were simply too far away or too dim for other telescopes to pursue with further analysis. The launch of TESS was scheduled to Monday evening, but it has been postponed until Wednesday. SpaceX tweeted Monday afternoon that it is "standing down today to conduct additional GNC [guidance navigation control] analysis, and teams are now working towards a targeted launch of @NASA_TESS on Wednesday, April 18."

34 comments

  1. Meanwhile... by jd · · Score: 1

    Congress is planning on killing the James Webb telescope as it can't now meet the absolute maximum budget authorized.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    1. Re:Meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They should kill it. Don't get me wrong, I love science but until the government gets these cost overruns under some type of control we have no business starting any large programs. The madness has to stop somehow.

    2. Re:Meanwhile... by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Informative

      To be fair, the cost overrun is about the cost of three F22 aircraft.

    3. Re:Meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Once it's killed will it be available for purchase on usa.gov?
      There's a couple of guys in California who own rocket companies that might be interested.

    4. Re: Meanwhile... by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      To be fair, the cost overrun is about the cost of three F22 aircraft.

      That's not even close to being true. The unit cost of an F22 is about $150 million. The existing fleet ended up costing the government more like $350 million each, but that's due to the fact that they decided to buy fewer of them after the R&D money had already been spent. Buying more would cost less.

      Meanwhile the James Webb was originally budgeted at $500 million. Adjusting for inflation that's about $770 million. As of now the projected cost is $8.8 billion. That's an $8 billion overrun. That's the equivalent of 22 of the existing F-22 fighters, or the equivalent of buying an additional 53 of them now.

    5. Re: Meanwhile... by jd · · Score: 1

      I'd still take the telescope.

      Part of the problem is the procurement procedure. Because it's minimum cost, regardless of whether it can be done for that or whether it would be any good, companies ALWAYS lowball.

      The other part of the problem is economic mismanagement by the government. A huge multinational collaboration is going to rack up costs due to differing exchange rates, differing inflation rates, the overheads of tepid government investment, the price of melting down the entire global economy, the cost of replacing lost scientists and engineers due to downsizing from the occasional global meltdown, unexpected costs of doing business due to the occasional trade war, botched management by political appointees, dictating who you can buy from, stuff like that.

      Giving a bunch of scientists and engineers a blank (but 100% refundable) check and telling them to come back with a working system or the money would give you better results for a lower price.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    6. Re: Meanwhile... by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      I'd still take the telescope.

      Of course you would. It could cost as much as 50,000 new F22 fighters and you would still pick the telescope. So why pretend it's an issue of cost rather than personal politics?

    7. Re: Meanwhile... by jd · · Score: 1

      I don't believe in the existence of individuals, since the mind is emergent and therefore transitory.

      I do believe in rates of return, fighters offer zero and telescopes offer - well, not much but still quite a bit.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    8. Re: Meanwhile... by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      I do believe in rates of return, fighters offer zero

      It's too bad you haven't actually studied it instead of just believing it. You could have avoided jumping to such absurd conclusions.

  2. Looking into the future by AlanObject · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anyone know how long before we launch a telescope capable of imaging one of these planets?

    1. Re:Looking into the future by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

      Answer: Never. Reason: Physics.

    2. Re:Looking into the future by crunchygranola · · Score: 5, Informative

      Physics begs to differ. Using a combination of a starshade external coronagraph, a large aperture telescope, and interferometry it will be possible to image the closer Earth-like planets at least.

      But it won't be for time. An initial starshade mission will need to be funded and launched, probably with a dedicated 4 meter telescope. 20 years perhaps,

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
    3. Re:Looking into the future by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At least 12-80,000 years, last I heard.

    4. Re:Looking into the future by ShoulderOfOrion · · Score: 1

      Look up angular resolution on your favorite search engine. Note that resolution = wavelength / baseline, where baseline is ginormous in order to get the fine resolution needed to image an extrasolar planet.

    5. Re:Looking into the future by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Considering that we recently managed to image a very distant red giant star well enough to see large sunspots and other features it should not be impossible to eventually image a planet if we have a big enough telescope array.

  3. First step by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    This is the first step for finding habitable planets outside of our solar system. The next step will be to build an interplanetary rocket. Musk is already working on that. Soon we will be able to get off this rock stuck in a gravity well forever!

    1. Re:First step by Knuckles · · Score: 1

      Not sure if serious.

      --
      "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
    2. Re:First step by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Why wouldn't I be serious? Do you want to be stuck on this rock forever? What if an asteroid hits?

    3. Re:First step by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (He's not and never has been.)

      TL;DR: He's a well-known 'anti Space Nutter' troll. These days, he mostly sticks to feigned sincerity instead of name-calling.

    4. Re:First step by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      Why wouldn't I be serious? Do you want to be stuck on this rock forever? What if an asteroid hits?

      I can only speak for myself, but I'm quite happy to be stuck on this rock -- it's (more or less) exactly the sort of rock my ancestors evolved to thrive on, so it suits me fine. In fact, I think it's quite pleasant, especially when compared to the available alternatives.

      As far as the risk of an asteroid hitting the Earth and killing me, that is something to be vaguely concerned about, but it's hard to see how traveling into outer space would reduce my chances of an early death -- rather quite the opposite.

      (Yes, I know, you intended "you" to refer to the entire human species, not to me as an individual -- but the fate of the species as a whole isn't a big concern of mine, and even if it was, I think at this stage any offworld colonies would be so dependent on Earth for equipment and supplies that they would all die out within a few years of Earth's demise anyway, making their existence or non-existence a non-factor for the foreseeable future. A more practical near-term approach to preserving the human species would involve setting up an asteroid tracking and orbit-modification system, as well as more serious efforts towards dealing with carbon emissions and nuclear proliferation)

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    5. Re:First step by Knuckles · · Score: 2

      If you were serious you are severely underestimating interstellar distances.

      --
      "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
    6. Re:First step by Knuckles · · Score: 1

      Thx

      --
      "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
  4. Re:That didn't take long... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, and he's going to aim it directly at you as revenge for all the nasty insults about him! The only way to escape his wrath is to hit the crack pipe extra hard and dig a deep hole straight down in your mom's basement.

    Now get digging.

  5. gas by swell · · Score: 1

    "gases that might hint at the presence of life ... methane "

    Excuse me, just because our atmosphere reeks with cow (& human) farts doesn't mean that all life has these problems. Any advanced civilization not obsessed with making weapons would have solved the problem.

    --
    ...omphaloskepsis often...
    1. Re:gas by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Methane is a problem? Who knew?

    2. Re:gas by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      Methane from biological functions of living organisms is not a problem on Earth. Nor is carbon dioxide from those processes either.

      The industrial production of these gasses may be another matter

  6. FYI. Launch live stream link. by Woldscum · · Score: 3, Informative

    https://youtu.be/aY-0uBIYYKk

    "SpaceX is targeting launch of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) on Wednesday, April 18 from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The 30-second launch window opens at 6:51 p.m. EDT, or 22:51 UTC. TESS will be deployed into a highly elliptical orbit approximately 48 minutes after launch.

    Following stage separation, SpaceX will attempt to land Falcon 9’s first stage on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean."

  7. Fred Saberhagen did it first! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(Saberhagen)

    His Berserkers were searching for planets too.

  8. We will never get there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We can image planets around other stars? Great. We can never get there.

  9. Nibiru Calls! by some+old+guy · · Score: 1

    Planet X is out there. Art Bell told me so.

    Before he died. Or from beyond the grave. Hard top tell which.

    Tess will find it. Elon Musk will explore it, and find Elvis at last.

    I wonder if there are crop circles on Nibiru. Tess will tell.

    Drat, time to feed the unicorns and mermaids again.

    --
    Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
  10. Who has pocketed the $8B overrun ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... the James Webb was originally budgeted at $500 million. Adjusting for inflation that's about $770 million. As of now the projected cost is $8.8 billion. That's an $8 billion overrun ...

    So, who has lined their pockets with the $8B overrun?

  11. Planet Hunter by Daralantan · · Score: 2

    Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet... I'm hunting pwanets!