The Committee to Nuke Elysium

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), backed by Google and MIT, uses a set of onboard cameras to scan the skies for so-called exoplanets orbiting bright and nearby stars. Its objective is to discover terrestrial planets — ranging in size from Earth equivalents to gas giants — within habitable regions of space. TESS will deploy techniques similar to those used by the Kepler telescope, which has thus far identified more than 2,700 potential exoplanets, though its scope will be much broader.

“TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission,” MIT’s George Ricker, TESS’ principle investigator, said in a statement. “It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth.”