Although we bid farewell to several historic space missions recently (Keppler’s nine-year planet hunting mission, Dawn’s 11-year mission to the asteroid belt, and Opportunity’s nearly 15-year exploration of Mars), we’ve had a few ground-breaking new ones to take over the skies.
TESS, a planet-hunting satellite, launched in April, 2018, and is NASA’s next mission in the search for exoplanets. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is on the lookout for planets that could support life, picking up where Kepler left off.
TESS will survey an area around 400 times more than what Kepler observed. NASA expects TESS to be able to catalog around 1,500 exoplanets, but it has the potential to locate thousands.
The Mars InSight Lander launched in May, 2018, and reached its destination on November 26. It’s measuring the planet’s “vital signs” (seismology, heat flow, etc.) in order to study the processes that formed the terrestrial planets.
The Parker Solar Probe, named for pioneering astrophysicist Eugene Parker, launched in August, and has already come closer to the sun than any spacecraft. Its seven-year mission will answer key questions about the sun and could provide insights about the physics of stars.
And OSIRIS-REx, NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission, just reached the asteroid Bennu after traveling for two years through space.
What do you think we should study in space?
