NASA’s planet-hunting mission is in protected mode after a pc glitch hit the spacecraft on Monday (Oct. 10).
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite tv for pc (TESS) mission launched in 2018 to survey the sky searching for exoplanets. TESS was designed to function for 2 years however has continued observations, figuring out greater than 250 confirmed exoplanets and hundreds of candidate worlds.
However on Monday, the spacecraft unexpectedly went into protected mode, halting observations, based on a NASA statement (opens in new tab). Within the intervening days, TESS personnel have decided that the transition to protected mode got here in response to a reset on the spacecraft’s flight pc.
Associated: See a stunning northern sky panorama from NASA TESS spacecraft
The spacecraft is steady, NASA famous, and the science observations not but relayed to Earth look like protected as nicely. (TESS orbits Earth on a very elliptical path and submits its knowledge whereas it’s closest to Earth.)
NASA officers wrote that whereas the workforce is working to revive TESS to regular operations, that course of might take a number of days.
Every month, TESS tackles a brand new patch of the sky, looking at a number of stars and measuring their brightness. Tiny rhythmic dimming will be the signal of a planet orbiting the star crossing TESS’ view.
Though the mission was designed to identify exoplanets, astronomers have additionally used TESS knowledge to review comets, supernovas and binary stars, amongst different cosmic objects.
E-mail Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or comply with her on Twitter @meghanbartels (opens in new tab). Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on Facebook (opens in new tab).Â
