NASA and MIT researchers have partnered up for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) project to locate a planet similar in size to Earth and around the same distance to the sun, and possibly locate extraterrestrial life along the way. "TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission," George Ricker, a senior research scientist at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, said in a statement. "It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth." TESS will collect data and send reports back to Earth every two weeks for several decades. Part of that research will revolve around finding extraterrestrial life."The selection of TESS has just accelerated our chances of finding life on another planet within the next decade," said Sara Seager, a professor of planetary science and physics at MIT.Source
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