• DOI:10.1117/1.JATIS.1.1.014003
• Corpus ID: 1342382

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

@article{Ricker2014TransitingES,
  title={Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite},
  author={George R. Ricker and Joshua N. Winn and Roland K. Vanderspek and David W. Latham and G{\'a}sp{\'a}r {\'A}. Bakos and Jacob L. Bean and Zachory K. Berta-Thompson and Timothy M. Brown and Lars A. Buchhave and Nathaniel R. Butler and R. Paul Butler and William J. Chaplin and David Charbonneau and J{\o}rgen Christensen-Dalsgaard and Mark C. Clampin and Drake L. Deming and John P. Doty and Nathan De Lee and Courtney D. Dressing and Edward Wood Dunham and Michael Endl and François Fressin and Jian Ge and Th. Henning and Matthew J. Holman and Andrew W. Howard and Shigeru Ida and Jon M. Jenkins and Garrett Jernigan and John Asher Johnson and Lisa Kaltenegger and Nobuyuki Kawai and Hans Kjeldsen and Gregory P. Laughlin and Alan M. Levine and Douglas N. C. Lin and Jack J. Lissauer and Phillip J. MacQueen and Geoffrey W. Marcy and Peter R. McCullough and Timothy D. Morton and Norio Narita and Martin A. Paegert and Enric Pall{\'e} and Francesco A. Pepe and Joshua A. Pepper and Andreas Quirrenbach and Stephen Andrew Rinehart and Dimitar D. Sasselov and Bun’ei Sato and Sara Seager and Alessandro Sozzetti and Keivan G. Stassun and Peter W. Sullivan and Andrew Szentgyorgyi and Guillermo Torres and St{\'e}phane Udry and Joel S. Villasenor},
  journal={Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems},
  year={2014},
  volume={1}
}

• G. Ricker, J. Winn, +55 authors J. Villasenor
• Published 1 June 2014
• Physics, Geology
• Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems

Abstract. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets transiting bright and nearby stars. TESS has been selected by NASA for launch in 2017 as an Astrophysics Explorer mission. The spacecraft will be placed into a highly elliptical 13.7-day orbit around the Earth. During its 2-year mission, TESS will employ four wide-field optical charge-coupled device cameras to monitor at least 200,000 main-sequence dwarf stars with IC≈4−13 for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. Each star will be observed for an interval ranging from 1 month to 1 year, depending mainly on the star’s ecliptic latitude. The longest observing intervals will be for stars near the ecliptic poles, which are the optimal locations for follow-up observations with the James Webb Space Telescope. Brightness measurements of preselected target stars will be recorded every 2 min, and full frame images will be recorded every 30 min. TESS stars will be 10 to 100 times brighter than those surveyed by the pioneering Kepler mission. This will make TESS planets easier to characterize with follow-up observations. TESS is expected to find more than a thousand planets smaller than Neptune, including dozens that are comparable in size to the Earth. Public data releases will occur every 4 months, inviting immediate community-wide efforts to study the new planets. The TESS legacy will be a catalog of the nearest and brightest stars hosting transiting planets, which will endure as highly favorable targets for detailed investigations.