Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

TESS is a low-cost SMEX-class satellite mission. In a two-year all-sky survey, TESS will observe more than 2,000,000 nearby stars, searching for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits.

TESS is expected to identify more than 1000 transiting exoplanet candidates, including a sample of about 100 Super Earths---small rock-and-ice planets in the range 1 to 10 Earth masses---orbiting F, G, K, and M dwarfs. TESS's "wide-shallow” survey complements the "narrow-deep” CoRoT and Kepler surveys. TESS-discovered transiting systems will be nearby (< 50 pc), and typically 10-20 x brighter than those discovered by CoRoT and Kepler. Thus, the resulting TESS Transit Catalog will comprise all of the best transiting systems for follow-up observations. TESS will identify Super Earths orbiting IR-bright stars, within reach of JWST spectroscopic searches for planetary water and carbon dioxide.

TESS is a collaborative effort led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the NASA Ames Research Center. Additional TESS scientific partners include Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope, Lowell Observatory, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology, the Geneva Observatory (Switzerland), the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan), and Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace (France).

TESS was funded by NASA for a Phase A study from May 2008 - June 2009, but was not selected for flight. Additional funding leading to a flight opportunity is being sought. Support has also been provided by the Kavli Foundation, Google, and the Smithsonian Institution. TESS could launch as early as 2013-2014.