Beyond Kepler: Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite Set For 2017 Launch 43
astroengine writes "NASA has selected a $200 million mission to carry out a full-sky survey for exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. The space observatory, called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is scheduled for a 2017 launch. Like the currently operational Kepler Space Telescope, TESS will be in the lookout for exoplanets that orbit in front of their host stars, resulting in a slight dip in starlight. This dip is known as a "transit" and Kepler has revolutionized our understanding about planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy by applying this effective technique. As of January 2013, Kepler has spotted 2,740 exoplanetary candidates. "TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission," said TESS lead scientist George Ricker, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. "It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth.""
Re:imagine (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is something I do know: over 5 million children in the United States will go to bed hungry tonight.
No they won't. That sound bite comes from a series of ridiculous distortions of the underlying data. In essence, 5 million children are at risk that some time during the month their parents (or other caregivers) will not provide them the meals they had planned to--and at that meal most of them will not even go hungry, they'll be fed cheaper food, and probably never even know about it.