This one is going be my desktop wallpaper for a time.

Sitting atop a Falcon-9 rocket. Awesome.

 

Now the key difference between say the Kepler telescope and this baby – there’s a couple key factors.

First – Kepler only looked at a small slice of the universe. TESS on the other hand will be capable of scanning the entirety looking for transit dips that indicate planets. But better this telescope has the ability to detect the atmosphere of said planets and figure out what’s going on.

Kind of like how if you looked at the Earth from a distance, spectography would tell you there’s Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon-Dioxide, and other gases that would show up.

And the acronym TESS stands for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.