Launch Day Arrives for NASA’s TESS Satellite

NASA’s newest planet-hunter, TESS, will look around the brightest stars closest to our solar system for new worlds.
NASA’s newest planet-hunter, TESS, will look around the brightest stars closest to our solar system for new worlds. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

In just a few hours, a NASA spacecraft is expected to launch on a mission to search the skies for the nearest terrestrial planets outside our solar system. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, is scheduled to lift off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 6:32 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Join us here at 6 p.m. for frequent updates from the countdown.