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TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite,

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is NASA's newest exoplanet mission. Led by MIT,

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TESS will find thousands of new planets orbiting nearby stars.

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During its two year survey,

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TESS will watch a wide variety of stars, looking for signs of planets ranging

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from Earth-size to larger than Jupiter.

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Each of TESS's cameras has a 16.8-megapixel sensor

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covering a square 24 degrees wide—large enough to

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contain an entire constellation. TESS has four of these cameras

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arranged to view a long strip of the sky, called an observation sector.

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TESS will watch each observation sector for

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about 27 days before rotating to the next.

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It will cover the southern sky in its first year, and then begin scanning the north.

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TESS will study 85 percent of the sky—

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an area 350 times greater than what NASA's Kepler mission

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first observed—making TESS the first exoplanet mission

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to survey nearly the entire sky.

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Because TESS's observation sectors overlap, it will have an area

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near the pole under constant observation. This region

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is easily monitored by the James Webb Space Telescope, which allows

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the two missions to work together to first find, and then carefully

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study exoplanets, expanding our understanding of worlds

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beyond our own.