{"id":5441,"date":"2018-04-18T10:11:08","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T10:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/?p=5441"},"modified":"2018-04-18T10:11:08","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T10:11:08","slug":"nasas-positive-on-next-planet-hunting-mission-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/2018\/04\/18\/nasas-positive-on-next-planet-hunting-mission-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s positive on next planet-hunting mission launch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Meteorologists with the US Air Force 45<sup>th<\/sup> Space Wing have predicted an 80 per cent chance of favourable weather for SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s launch with NASA\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite aimed at detecting planets outside our solar system.<!--more-->The primary weather concern for the launch day are strong winds, NASA said in a statement late Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>The survey, also known as Tess, is NASA\u2019s next step in the search for exoplanets, including those that could support life.<\/p>\n<p>Once in orbit, Tess will spend about two years surveying 200,000 of the brightest stars near the Sun to search for planets outside our solar system.<\/p>\n<p>Tess will find the most promising exoplanets orbiting relatively nearby stars, giving future researchers a rich set of new targets for more comprehensive follow-up studies, including the potential to assess their capacity to harbour life.<\/p>\n<p>With the help of a gravitational assist from the Moon, the spacecraft will settle into a 13.7-day orbit around Earth, NASA said in an earlier statement.<\/p>\n<p>Sixty days after the launch and following tests of its instruments, the satellite will begin its initial two-year mission. Four wide-field cameras will give Tess a field-of-view that covers 85 per cent of our entire sky.<\/p>\n<p>Within this vast visual perspective, the sky has been divided into 26 sectors that Tess will observe one by one.<\/p>\n<p>The first year of observations will map the 13 sectors encompassing the southern sky, and the second year will map the 13 sectors of the northern sky.<\/p>\n<p>The spacecraft will be looking for a phenomenon known as a transit, where a planet passes in front of its star, causing a periodic and regular dip in the star\u2019s brightness.<\/p>\n<p>NASA\u2019s Kepler spacecraft used the same method to spot more than 2,600 confirmed exoplanets, most of them orbiting faint stars 300 to 3,000 light-years away.<\/p>\n<p><strong>IANS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Picture source: AFP<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meteorologists with the US Air Force 45th Space Wing have predicted an 80 per cent chance of favourable weather for SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s launch with NASA\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite aimed at detecting planets outside our solar system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[103,49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5443,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5441\/revisions\/5443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}