NASA is scheduled to launch its next planet-hunting satellite at 6:32 p.m. Monday, April 16, and the space agency will broadcast the launch window on its website and television station.
NASA is scheduled to launch its next planet-hunting satellite at 6:32 p.m. Monday, April 16, and the space agency will broadcast the launch window on its website and television station.
Starting at 6 p.m., the U. S. space agency will cover the events surrounding the countdown and launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The NASA TV livestream has been embedded below, or you can choose to watch the coverage by clicking here. U. S. Air Force meteorologists give Monday’s launch having an 80 percent chance of favorable weather for liftoff with strong winds serving as the only possible culprit.
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The satellite, TESS, is the U. S. space agency’s newest planet-hunting spacecraft that will search for undiscovered planets outside of our solar system, known as exoplanets. The TESS will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
NASA calls TESS its “next step” in discovering exoplanets — a planet that orbits a star in any solar system other than the one Earth calls home — “including those that could support life.” The mission is expected to create a database of thousands of new planet candidates that could increase the space agency’s current figure of exoplanets.
An exoplanet is a planet that orbits a star in any solar system other than the one Earth calls home.
