Most of the exoplanets will be orbiting stars called red dwarfs, much smaller and cooler than the sun. Like Kepler, Tess will hunt those planets by monitoring the light from stars and detecting slight dips, momentary fading indicating that a planet has passed in front of its star. The mission’s planners say they eventually expect to catalog 20,000 new exoplanet candidates of all shapes and sizes. Tess is one of NASA’s smaller missions, with a budget of $200 million; by comparison, Kepler had a budget of about $650 million. Recently Tess, partly clad in shiny aluminum foil, stubby solar panels folded modestly against its side, was sitting on a round pedestal inside a plastic tent.

Source: New York Times March 26, 2018 09:00 UTC