NASA will launch two major space missions in the coming days, TESS, for the discovery of exoplanets, and InSight, for the study of the interior of Mars. The first takeoff will be that of the TESS mission, scheduled for April 16th.
TESS will continue the search for exoplanets
TESS has the purpose of continuing the search for planets outside our solar system that orbit around stars similar to the sun. The information obtained from this planetary search engine will allow the scientific community to develop future studies to assess the capacity of the exoplanets to hold life.
This exoplanets hunter will be monitoring the brightness of more than 200,000 stars during its mission that will last two years.
TESS will begin the identification of planets as soon as 60 days after its launch from the Space Launch Complex 40, at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida, and will concentrate on stars less than 300 light-years away and with a brightness of 30 to 100 times more than Kepler’s exoplanets.
Researchers hope that during the first year of work, the ship can map 13 areas of the southern sky and, during its second year in space, TESS will map the northern sector.
InSight mission will study the undergrounds of Mars
For its part, NASA’s InSight mission, scheduled to launch on May 5, will be the first robotic landing module dedicated to exploring the deep interior of Mars.
In addition, it will be the first mission of the US space agency since the lunar landing mission in which NASA will place a seismometer on the ground of another planet, in order to study the earthquakes of the Martian world.
The results of detailed information about the Red Planet’s crust, mantle, and nucleus will help scientists know how planets were born.
NASA astronomers believe that Mars is the nearest example of how gas, dust, and heat combine and organize on a planet. Looking at Mars will allow scientists to understand how different the crust, mantle, and the core of the Earth’s are.
Currently, InSight is at Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California, in the final stage before launch.
In short, NASA will launch TESS exoplanets hunter on April 16th, while, on May 5th, the US Space Agency will launch the InSight mission to Mars which has the purpose of studying the interior of the Red Planet.