NASA’s planet-hunting mission is in secure 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 in search of exoplanets. TESS was designed to function for 2 years however has continued observations, figuring out greater than 250 confirmed exoplanets and 1000’s of candidate worlds.
However on Monday, the spacecraft unexpectedly went into secure mode, halting observations, based on a NASA statement (opens in new tab). Within the intervening days, TESS personnel have decided that the transition to secure mode got here in response to a reset on the spacecraft’s flight laptop.
Associated: See a stunning northern sky panorama from NASA TESS spacecraft
The spacecraft is secure, NASA famous, and the science observations not but relayed to Earth seem like secure as nicely. (TESS orbits Earth on a very elliptical path and submits its information 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, observing a bunch of stars and measuring their brightness. Tiny rhythmic dimming could 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 information 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). Observe us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on Facebook (opens in new tab).
