Two months after its launch, the TESS satellite has already identified two new exoplanet candidates, reports Mary Beth Griggs for Popular Science. “The team is excited about what TESS might discover next,” explains Prof. Sara Seager, who is serving as the deputy science director for the mission.
New Scientist reporter Will Gater writes that the TESS satellite has found its first two exoplanets. “This is one of the first objects we looked at,” says MIT postdoctoral fellow Chelsea Huang of the discovery of an exoplanet about 60 light years away. “We were immediately saying ‘hey this is too good to be true!’”
New York Times reporter Dennis Overbye writes about how the TESS satellite has already identified at least 73 stars that might have exoplanets. “TESS is doing great,” says George Ricker, a senior research scientist at MIT who is leading the TESS mission. Ricker adds that the satellite is, “all that we could have wished for!”
The TESS satellite has identified two new exoplanets, reports Joey Roulette for Reuters. “We will have to wait and see what else TESS discovers,” says Prof. Sara Seager, who is serving as the TESS deputy science director. “We do know that planets are out there, littering the night sky, just waiting to be found.”
Prof. Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research, speaks with Boston Globe reporter Jon Marcus about the growing interest in space and exploration in America. “Discovery, pure and simple, is truth. It’s pure. It’s a beautiful thing,” says Zuber, who has directed several NASA missions and chairs the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Advisory Council.
Tim Brothers, who manages MIT's George R. Wallace Jr. Astrophysical Observatory, speaks with Joy Richard of WickedLocal about the upcoming Perseid meteor shower and the observatory’s annual viewing party. Brothers says the event is a great way to get nearby residents interested in space: They grab the opportunity to look through the telescopes, take a tour of the observatory, and look in awe at the 60 to 70 meteors per-hour.
Prof. Dava Newman highlighted the potential concrete benefits and cultural impact of successfully landing on Mars during her commentary before a Senate subcommittee, reports Meghan Bartels for Space.com. “We get humans there with all our great science, it will just lift us up,” said Newman.
In an article for The Boston Globe about the growing interest in space exploration, Hiawatha Bray highlights how MIT researchers have pushed the field forward. Bray notes that places like MIT helped the US win the space race and, “continue as major centers of space research. And the ideas emerging from their labs may help our region punch above its weight.”
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), launching April 16th, “could mark our first step toward discovering another planet outside of our solar system that harbors life,” writes Miriam Kramer for Mashable. "Planet finding never gets old," said Prof. Sara Seager. "I hope the public will joyfully share in discoveries."
Set to launch on April 16th, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), will be used to identify “planets that are close enough to Earth for astronomers to explore them in detail,” writes Alexandra Witze for Nature. “It’s not so much the numbers of planets that we care about, but the fact that they are orbiting nearby stars,” says Prof. Sara Seager, deputy science director for TESS.
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is “the brainchild of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” hopes to “identify at least 50 rocky exoplanets—Earth-size or bigger,” that will eventually be scrutinized by a larger telescope that is launching in 2022, writes Daniel Clery for Science. “This is the finder scope,” explains research scientist and TESS principal investigator George Ricker.
Launching next month, the TESS satellite “is NASA's next mission in the search for exoplanets,”writes Ashley Strickland for CNN. “We expect TESS will discover a number of planets whose atmospheric compositions, which hold potential clues to the presence of life, could be precisely measured by future observers,” said George Ricker of the MIT Kavli Institute, who is a principal investigator on the mission.
Dennis Overbye of The New York Times speaks with Prof. Sara Seager and senior research scientist George Ricker about the future of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. The mission, led and operated by MIT, is preparing to orbit Earth for two years in search of other planets.
This April, NASA will launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which will measure the masses of at least 50 “potentially Earth-like worlds,” writes Irene Klotz for Scientific American. “We’re finding the particular star that actually potentially hosts an exoplanet around it,” said senior research scientist George Ricker, the lead scientist on TESS.
Daniel Michaels and Andy Pasztor of The Wall Street Journal highlight Prof. Dava Newman’s BioSuit in an article about upgrades and improvements in space suits. Regarding the skintight, flexible suit, Michaels and Pasztor write that Newman’s suit differs in that, “pressure comes not from gas but from tiny electrically activated coils embedded in fabric.”