Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

Optimax supplied the telescope optics for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is equipped with a suite of four wide-field optical cameras. These cameras, designed with precision Optimax optics, are crucial for scanning the sky to discover exoplanets. The TESS payload includes the cameras, hoods, mount, sun shield, and Data Handling Unit (DHU), all coupled to the NGIS LEOStar-2/750 spacecraft bus. This spacecraft provides power through deployable solar arrays, attitude control, data storage, and communication capabilities, enabling TESS to survey distant star systems for potential planets.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is the next step in the search for planets outside of our solar system, including those that could support life. The mission will find exoplanets that periodically block part of the light from their host stars, events called transits. TESS will survey 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun to search for transiting exoplanets.

LAUNCHED: TESS launched on April 18, 2018, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Perseverance is on its way to Mars, click these links to find out more about its journey:

Videos and Images Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

• About the TESS mission
• Characteristics of the TESS Space Telescope
• TESS Stories
• TESS Videos