After a delay, SpaceX is winding up again to launch NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) today (April 18) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The 30-second launch window of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is set for 6:51 p.m. EDT (2251 GMT), and you can watch the launch live on Space.com's home page starting at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT), courtesy of NASA TV. After launch, the rocket's first stage is set to attempt a landing on the SpaceX drone ship Of Course I Still Love You.

After it reaches space, TESS will maneuver into an oblong orbit around Earth, circling twice for each orbit of the moon. From there, it will search for a telltale darkening of stars as planets pass in front of them. It will use this technique to identify exoplanets relatively near to Earth that could be investigated by future telescopes, such as the James Webb. It will build on the work of the Kepler space telescope, which found exoplanets in a similar way but circled the sun, rather than Earth, and focused on one small patch of the sky for its first mission. Kepler has identified 2,650 exoplanets to date, which is more than 70 percent of all known, alien worlds.

The TESS launch was called off April 16 to allow scientists to conduct more guidance navigation and control analysis of the rocket, NASA officials wrote on Twitter. "The @NASA_TESS spacecraft is in excellent health and remains ready for launch on the new targeted date of Wednesday, April 18," they added. NASA's Kennedy Space Center also confirmed on Twitter that the launch would proceed April 18, and SpaceX posted that everything was looking good this morning.

Weather is looking good for today's launch, with the Air Force's 45th Space Wing weather squadron forecasting that conditions will be more than 90 percent favorable for the launch.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. </s> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - SpaceX postponed a planned launch on Monday of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying NASA's latest planet-hunting satellite for 48 hours, citing problems with a guidance-navigation control system, launch team officials said.

Blast-off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida has been delayed until at least Wednesday, according to Space Exploration Technologies, which NASA contracted to loft its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, into orbit.

 

 (Reporting by Joey Roulette at Cape Canaveral, Florida; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Sandra Maler) </s> Washington, April 12 (IANS) NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or Tess aimed at detecting planets outside our solar system, is set to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida on April 16.

The mission is scheduled to launch no earlier around 4.02 a.m. on April 17 (India time) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, NASA said on Wednesday.

Tess is NASA’s next step in the search for exoplanets, including those that could support life.

Once in orbit, Tess will spend about two years surveying 200,000 of the brightest stars near the Sun to search for planets outside our solar system.

Tess will find the most promising exoplanets orbiting relatively nearby stars, giving future researchers a rich set of new targets for more comprehensive follow-up studies, including the potential to assess their capacity to harbour life.

With the help of a gravitational assist from the Moon, the spacecraft will settle into a 13.7-day orbit around Earth, NASA said in an earlier statement.

Sixty days after the launch and following tests of its instruments, the satellite will begin its initial two-year mission. Four wide-field cameras will give Tess a field-of-view that covers 85 per cent of our entire sky.

Within this vast visual perspective, the sky has been divided into 26 sectors that Tess will observe one by one.

The first year of observations will map the 13 sectors encompassing the southern sky, and the second year will map the 13 sectors of the northern sky.

The spacecraft will be looking for a phenomenon known as a transit, where a planet passes in front of its star, causing a periodic and regular dip in the star’s brightness.

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft used the same method to spot more than 2,600 confirmed exoplanets, most of them orbiting faint stars 300 to 3,000 light-years away </s> New Delhi: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is all set to launch its next planet-hunting spacecraft on Monday, April 16 at 6:32 pm EDT (4.02 am IST, April 17). The spacecraft is scheduled to be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission will study thousands of planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, orbiting the nearest and brightest stars in our cosmic neighbourhood.

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, giving future researchers a rich set of new targets for more comprehensive follow-up studies, including the potential to assess their capacity to harbor life.

With the help of a gravitational assist from the Moon, the spacecraft will settle into a 13.7-day orbit around Earth, NASA said in an earlier statement.

Sixty days after the launch and following tests of its instruments, the satellite will begin its initial two-year mission. Four wide-field cameras will give Tess a field-of-view that covers 85 percent of our entire sky.

Within this vast visual perspective, the sky has been divided into 26 sectors that Tess will observe one by one.

The first year of observations will map the 13 sectors encompassing the southern sky, and the second year will map the 13 sectors of the northern sky.

The spacecraft will be looking for a phenomenon known as a transit, where a planet passes in front of its star, causing a periodic and regular dip in the star's brightness.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft used the same method to spot more than 2,600 confirmed exoplanets, most of them orbiting faint stars 300 to 3,000 light-years away </s> NASA and SpaceX are putting the final touches to the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission at Cape Canaveral, ahead of its launch window on Monday, April 16.

TESS is the next phase of the space agency’s search for planets outside our Solar System and aims to blast off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than 6.32 pm EDT. The event will be broadcast live on NASA TV.

NASA’s Kepler mission, which has confirmed the existence of over a thousand exoplanets and counting, has captured the public imagination with descriptions of worlds far outside our Solar System that may be capable of hosting alien life. The data it gathered over four years is still being analysed but the spacecraft, although still operational for now, has ended its primary world-hunting mission.

TESS hopes to pick up where Kepler left off by surveying 200,000 of the brightest stars near to the Sun to search for transiting exoplanets. The research team behind the project, including scientists from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and MIT (along with dozens of other universities and institutes) are hoping that TESS will provide details of thousands more planet candidates to vastly increase the current known number of exoplanets. As of today, there are 3,758 known worlds out there, but just 53 are considered potentially habitable.

TESS’ job is not only to find more exoplanets, but also identify the most promising ones that orbit our nearest and brightest stars so that scientists can run follow-up studies that will perhaps finally find a habitable, or indeed inhabited, world.

“The stars TESS will study are 30 to 100 times brighter than those the Kepler mission and K2 follow-up surveyed, which will enable far easier follow-up observations with both ground-based and space-based telescopes. TESS will also cover a sky area 400 times larger than that monitored by Kepler,” NASA explains on the TESS mission pages.

Right now, TESS is awaiting the go at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40, where it has just been sealed inside the Falcon 9 payload fairing in preparation for its move to the launch pad.

NASA TV coverage will start at 11am on Sunday with an overview of the mission and prelaunch and science news. Coverage will continue on Monday with a half-hour live show at 10am, followed by the live launch itself beginning at 6pm ahead of blast-off at 6.32. </s> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA has launched a spacecraft to the sun that will fly closer to our star than anything ever sent before.

The Parker Solar Probe rocketed away from Cape Canaveral, Florida, early Sunday. It’s on an unprecedented quest that will take it straight through the wispy edges of the corona, or outer solar atmosphere, just 3.8 million (6 million kilometers) from the sun’s surface.

Protected by a revolutionary new heat shield, the spacecraft will fly past Venus in October. That will set up the first solar encounter in November. Altogether, it will make 24 close approaches over the next seven years.

Thousands of spectators jammed the launch site, including 91-year-old astrophysicist Eugene Parker for whom the spacecraft is named. He proposed the existence of the solar wind 60 years ago.

Saturday’s launch countdown was halted with just one-minute, 55 seconds remaining, keeping the Delta IV (four) rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the Parker Solar Probe. This followed earlier trouble in the countdown. </s> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA's newest planet-hunting spacecraft will have to wait another couple of days before lifting off.

Two hours before Monday evening's scheduled launch, SpaceX announced it needed more time to check its rocket, which will carry the satellite to orbit. The next attempt will be Wednesday night.

The satellite known as Tess will survey almost the entire sky, staring at the brightest, closest stars in an effort to find any planets that might be encircling them. These mysterious worlds beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, could harbor life.

Scientists expect Tess — the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite — to discover thousands of rocky and icy planets and gas giants, maybe even water worlds and places defying imagination. Bigger and more powerful observatories of the future will scrutinize these prime candidates for potential signs of life.

SpaceX said extra time is needed to examine the Falcon 9 rocket's guidance, navigation and control system. Additional information was not immediately available, according to a spokesman.

SpaceX sometimes uses recycled rocket boosters, but this one is brand new. The company hopes to land this first stage on a floating ocean platform following liftoff, and reuse it on a space station supply run for NASA this summer.

The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. </s> CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, Fla. — After scrubbing an attempted launch on Monday evening, SpaceX and NASA plan to send a probe into space on Wednesday evening to search for alien worlds.
• SpaceX will try to land booster on drone ship
• SEE BELOW: Join the LIVE CHAT at 6:30 p.m. ▼
• SEE BELOW: WATCH the Falcon 9 launch ▼

The Falcon 9 rocket is set to take off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:51 p.m., Wednesday.

The 200-foot-tall rocket will carry the NASA TESS spacecraft, which stands for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. The probe will hunt and scan for planets outside of our solar system that could support life as humans know it.

During TESS' two-year mission, four cameras will study and catalog 200,000 planet candidates. TESS will survey a larger area than the NASA Kelper probe, which launched in 2009, and find planets that are close enough to check out with Earth-based telescopes.

After the launch attempt, SpaceX will attempt to land the first-stage booster on its drone ship hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic Ocean about 10 minutes after launch. The booster is new and has not flown before.

In addition, SpaceX is now trying to recover its payload fairing — which is the big nose cone on the Falcon 9. SpaceX is hoping to use parachutes to help guide the nose cone to a soft landing on the ocean surface after launch. </s> A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a planet-hunting satellite for NASA was set to take off Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Hawthorne-based SpaceX will begin a live stream before the launch, which is scheduled for 3:51 p.m. Pacific time.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will conduct a two-year survey to find potential planets orbiting stars relatively close to Earth. A drone ship on the Atlantic Ocean will attempt to land the rocket’s first stage booster.

Related: SpaceX plans to build a Mars-bound rocket at Port of Los Angeles

The launch had been scheduled for Monday, but was postponed to conduct additional guidance, navigation and control systems analysis.
NASA announces that the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will be launched from Cape Canaveral on April 16.