Orbital TESS User Manual
LEO
Astrophysics
TESS
Discovering Exoplanets Orbiting Nearby Stars
FACTS AT A GLANCE
Mission Description
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is an Explorer-class planet nder. In the rst-ever
space-borne all-sky transit survey, TESS will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants,
orbiting a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. The principal goal of the TESS mission is to
detect small planets with bright host stars in the solar neighborhood, so that detailed characterizations
of the planets and their atmospheres can be performed.
TESS will monitor more than 500,000 stars during a two year mission, searching for temporary drops in
brightness caused by planetary transits. Transits occur when a planet’s orbit carries it directly in front of
its parent star as viewed from Earth. TESS is expected to catalog more than 3,000 transiting exoplanet
candidates, including a sample of approximately 500 Earth-sized and ‘Super Earth’ planets, with radii
less than twice that of the Earth. TESS will detect small rock-and-ice planets orbiting a diverse range of
stellar types and covering a wide span of orbital periods, including rocky worlds in the habitable zones
of their host stars.
Spacecraft
The TESS mission will be based on Orbital’s LEOStar™-2 platform, a exible, high-performance
spacecraft for space and Earth science, remote sensing and other applications. LEOStar-2 can
accommodate various instrument interfaces, deliver up to 2 kilowatt orbit average payload power, and
support payloads up to 500 kilograms. Performance options include redundancy, propulsion capability,
high data rate communications, and high-agility/high-accuracy pointing. TESS will be the eighth
LEOStar-2 based spacecraft built for NASA.
TESS will carry out the rst space-borne
all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times
as much sky as any previous planet-
hunting mission
From its planned high-Earth orbit, TESS
will approach close enough to the Earth
for high data-downlink rates, while
remaining above the planet’s harmful
radiation belts
Mission:
Identifying candidate exoplanet
candidates for further study by the
James Webb Space Telescope and
other future telescopes
Customer:
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Artist’s rendering of TESS in orbit (MIT image)
TESS
Specications
Spacecraft
Launch Mass: 350 kg (772 lb.)
Redundancy: Selective
Solar Arrays: 400 W (EoL) Two wing solar array, xed and
articulating modes
Stabilization: 3-Axis via 4 Hydrazine thrusters, Four wheel
ne-pointing ACS
Orbit: 17 Earth-radii perigee, 59 Earth-radii apogee
Mission Life: Two Years
Launch
Launch Vehicle: Antares, Falcon 9, Taurus XL, Athena IIc, or
Athena
Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center or Wallops Flight
Facility
Date: 2017
Instrument
The TESS instrument consists of four wide eld-of-view CCD cameras.
The CCDs, manufactured at the MIT Lincoln Lab, are extremely efcient
for photon detection and are a derivative of silicon CCDs previously
developed for space-based x-ray missions including NASA's Chandra
X-ray observatory and several Japanese missions.
Mission Partners
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Mission management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Principal investigator Dr. George Ricker, instrument development
Orbital Sciences Corporation
Spacecraft development, observatory integration and testing
Additional Partners
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI)
and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, NASA’s Ames Research Center, the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, The Aerospace
Corporation, and the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Orbital Sciences Corporation
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