Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

What people said

Recommends SE - stop firing the good guys · 2015-07 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Could a (differently) inclined orbit remain above a Lunar pole half of every revolution?”

It is not possible to do this with just one communication satellite orbiting around the Moon, due to the reasons described by @HopDavid. However, it can be done with just one comsat in Earth orbit. Imagine a satellite in polar orbit of Earth , with a high apogee and a low perigee. If the apogee is over the north pole, the comsat will be over the equatorial plane in more than half of the time , with free line of sight to the Moon's pole. The short periods when the satellite is under the equatorial plane is covered by direct line of sight between the Moon and Earth. Such a high eccentricity orbit is somewhat analogue to a Molnya orbit [LINK] , an orbit that is often used for Russian communicat

Recommends user12102 · 2018-04 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “TESS orbit and moon resonance”

An excellent review of all of the considerations and work that has gone into designing TESS' orbit can be read in the ArXiv preprint A High Earth, Lunar Resonant Orbit for Lower Cost Space Science Missions [LINK] and I'll draw primarily from this, and the excellent YouTube video Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) [this video] . The development of TESS' remarkable orbit and scientists who worked on this project are also discussed in the 2013 NASA article New Explorer Mission Chooses the ‘Just-Right’ Orbit [LINK] : Principal Investigator George Ricker likes to call it the "Goldilocks orbit" — it’s not too close to Earth and her Moon, and it’s not too far. In fact, it’s just right. [LINK]

Cites TildalWave · 2015-04 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Which lagrange (earth-moon) point is better for a space settlement?”

This entirely depends on the purpose of such a settlement. Could you please [edit] to clarify? E.g., would it depend on regular supplies from the Earth, Moon, or both? Does it serve as an outpost / refueling station or services orbiting satellites / stations? Please specify criteria for what you'd consider as "better". For example, an inclined resonant orbit or an Earth-Moon cycler could deal away with perturbations and stay long-term stable (see TESS [this video] ), but might not be optimal for what you have in mind. Thanks!

Cites user12102 · 2017-06 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Why would a box full of 1cm balls released into LEO be so scary to an engineer supporting the ISS?”

update March 2018: I just saw this in Buzzfeed (Google sent me there, I don't normally read it): Rich People Will Soon Be Able To Buy Fake Meteor Showers On Demand [LINK] . It seems this might happen in 2018. I was watching this really cool video [this video] about the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite [LINK] (TESS) spacecraft, and I saw what looks like this Marmon ring [LINK] fly off and instinctively thought "geez, that could put somebody's eye out, how reckless!" which isn't the right way to think about space debris. Then I asked this question [LINK] and got quite a rise out of some people. Apparently releasing a lot of ~1cm objects into LEO set off some some "internal alarms" ;) So can so

Cites user12102 · 2017-06 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Why is TESS' high gain antenna made of undulating BLACK fabric rather than metal?”

[LINK] above: from Facebook [LINK] , then annotated. There is an excellent review of the design of the TESS spacecraft in G. R. Richter et al. Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 1(1), 014003 (Jan–Mar 2015) PDF available at MIT here [LINK] . The text of this 5-Apr-2017 tweet [LINK] from NASA_TESS [LINK] says: . NASA_TESS [LINK] with solar arrays stowed. OrbitalATK [LINK] spacecraft will be in this configuration when it is placed in a SpaceX [LINK] Falcon9 next year! and it shows an image of the antenna. Below are cropped sections from that image and from an earlier, 06-FEb-2017 tweet [LINK] . The largest one highlights the radial undulations in the contour of the ref

Cites user12102 · 2018-04 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “The appearance of TESS' dish seems to be evolving, what will be the final configuration?”

The question Why is TESS' high gain antenna made of undulating BLACK fabric rather than metal? [LINK] has had three bounties, and is probably the recipient of this sites longest answer. My personal pet theory was that the undulations were a diffractive surface for the RF so that the receiver would be at an RF focus but not an optical focus , since TESS' attitude may unavoidably point the dish toward the Sun. However, now TESS is shown with a presumably RF-transparent cover over the antenna. You can see lots of detailed photos of the construction of TESS and its individual components in the recent Spaceflight 101 page Photos: TESS Spacecraft Assembly & Testing [LINK] Here's a screen shot of a

Cites user12102 · 2018-04 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Why does Earth not appear to be at the focus of TESS' elliptical orbit in this video?”

An excellent review of all of the considerations and work that has gone into designing TESS' orbit can be read in the ArXiv preprint A High Earth, Lunar Resonant Orbit for Lower Cost Space Science Missions [LINK] and I'll draw primarily from this, and the excellent YouTube video Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) [this video] . For a more in-depth discussion of the details of the mission's orbit, see this answer [LINK] . Cropped from the video Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) [this video] at 06:57 this screen shot appears to show a top-down view of TESS' orbit in a way that shows Earth offset from the major axis of the spacecraft's orbit. Note that the inclination of the orbit is

Cites user12102 · 2018-05 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Any news of TESS' lunar flyby; how well did go?”

According to this TESS tweet [LINK] : TESS is on track for a lunar flyby on 17 May at 06:34:35 UTC (2:34 AM EST). At this point, TESS will be 8,253 km from the lunar surface. In the coming days, follow @NASA, @NASAGoddard, @NASAblueshift and @NASA_TESS for more details. That's 10 20+ hours ago, and there have been no further tweets. The last TLE I can see is now two weeks old and certainly invalid considering the lunar flyby would modify the trajectory so much. Also I don't see or at least recognize TESS in the Minor Planet Center's Distant Artificial Satellites Observation [LINK] page at all, and JPL's Horizons most recent ephemeris was generated on May 14th, several days before the flyby.

Cites user12102 · 2023-03 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Could the Lunar Lagrange Points work for space telescopes?”

Pros and cons of space telescope in an Earth-Moon L2-associated libration orbit Pros: Some orbits will allow the possibility of spending some time behind the Moon which can completely eclipse Earth. That might be quite helpful for certain space-based radio telescopes. For frequencies above something like 20 to 50 MHz Earth's ionosphere is fairly transparent and terrestrial RF noise may be a problem. For frequencies below that Earth's surface is blocked but Earth's ionosphere is going to be noisy naturally. What can be learned from low frequency radio astronomy available outside of Earth's ionosphere? [LINK] For further reading about strange-looking libration orbits in the Earth-Moon system (