Mission Concept
Once launched, the telescope would conduct a two-year all-sky survey program for exploring transiting exoplanets around nearby and bright stars. TESS would be equipped with four wide-angle telescopes and charge-coupled device (CCD) detectors, with a total size of 192 megapixels. Science data will be processed and stored for three months onboard, and only data of interest will be transmitted to Earth for further analysis. Data collected by the spacecraft are also stored for three months, enabling astrophysicists to search the data for an unexpected, transient phenomenon, such as a gamma-ray burst.
Read more about this topic: Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
Famous quotes containing the words mission and/or concept:
“The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.”
—William McKinley (1843–1901)
“By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)