The Kepler spacecraft discovered over 2000 planets around other stars. But Kepler looked at only about ¼ of 1 percent of the whole sky. The TESS spacecraft will survey almost the entire celestial sphere over its two year mission. This presentation will describe what exoplanets are, how TESS looks for them, what the TESS spacecraft looks like and some of the recent results.
Shane Hynes was the Mission Systems Engineer for TESS satellite and had overall responsibility for the technical success of the mission. The first mission Shane worked on, Ariel 6, launched in 1979, since then he has designed electronics for the Hitchhiker program, led a team flying a Ultra-Violet photometer on five Space Shuttle flights (STS-34, 41, 43, 45, 56), been a systems engineer on the TRMM, FUSE, EO-1 missions and been the Mission Systems Engineer for STEREO before becoming the Mission Systems Engineer for TESS mission.
Total Duration: 45 minutes, plus Q&A
Audience: older children and adults - not aimed at young children