A Proposed Space Telescope Could Find 100's of Earths
Department:
Astrotech
Teaser:
A proposed new satellite called TESS -- the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite would observe 2.5 million of the nearest and brightest stars discovering 1,600 to 2,700 exoplanets and 100 to 300 small planets comparable to the Earth in size. As with the Kepler Space Observatory, TESS would detect planets using the transit method.
Source:
Space News From SpaceDaily.Com Download time: Jan 13 2010 7:09 AM ET
The race to find exoplanets - planets outside our solar system - continues to quicken. Last week NASA researchers announced that the agency's new space telescope, Kepler, has discovered five new exoplanets, expanding the number of known exoplanets to 422, an increase of about 25 percent in the past year alone.
A satellite proposed by MIT researchers could accelerate these discoveries and even detect hundreds of Earth-sized planets - a few of which could be natural candidates for life.…
