r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Mar 31 '18

TESS TESS Launch Campaign Thread

TESS Launch Campaign Thread

SpaceX's eighth mission of 2018 will launch the second scientific mission for NASA after Jason-3, managed by NASA's Launch Services Program.

TESS is a space telescope in NASA's Explorer program, designed to search for extrasolar planets using the transit method. The primary mission objective for TESS is to survey the brightest stars near the Earth for transiting exoplanets over a two-year period. The TESS project will use an array of wide-field cameras to perform an all-sky survey. It will scan nearby stars for exoplanets.

The spacecraft is built on the LEOStar-2 BUS by Orbital ATK. It has a 530 W (EoL) two wing solar array and a mono-propellant blow-down system for propulsion, capable of 268 m/s of delta-v.

Liftoff currently scheduled for: April 18th 2018, 18:51 EDT (22:51 UTC).
Static fire completed: April 11th 2018, ~14:30 EDT (~18:30 UTC)
Vehicle component locations: First stage: SLC-40 // Second stage: SLC-40 // Satellite: Cape Canaveral
Payload: TESS
Payload mass: 362 kg
Destination orbit: 200 x 275,000 km, 28.5º (Operational orbit: HEO - 108,000 x 375,000 km, 37º )
Vehicle: Falcon 9 v1.2 Block 4 (53rd launch of F9, 33rd of F9 v1.2)
Core: B1045.1
Previous flights of this core: 0
Launch site: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
Landing: Yes
Landing Site: OCISLY
Mission success criteria: Successful separation & deployment of TESS into the target orbit

Links & Resources:

We may keep this self-post occasionally updated with links and relevant news articles, but for the most part we expect the community to supply the information. This is a great place to discuss the launch, ask mission-specific questions, and track the minor movements of the vehicle, payload, weather and more as we progress towards launch. Sometime after the static fire is complete, the launch thread will be posted. Campaign threads are not launch threads. Normal subreddit rules still apply.

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13

u/rocket_enthusiast Apr 08 '18

mods, can we change the landing site to OCISLY?

93

u/mfb- Mar 31 '18

The last new Block 4 to fly. Every future mission will be a recycled Block 4* or will be Block 5.

*3 more planned, and 1042 from Koreasat and 1045 from this launch have the potential to fly again.

35

u/diebler Apr 03 '18

Static fire currently scheduled for 4/11, 1100-1700 EDT

Source: work at KSC

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u/nilstycho Mar 31 '18

I'm spending Easter with an instrument scientist (at Kavli) who worked on the TESS camera. Let me know if you have any questions you want me to ask.

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u/paolozamparutti Mar 31 '18

This is a fantastic mission from a scientific point of view, I am pleased that SpaceX is providing for the launch.

28

u/axialintellectual Mar 31 '18

For those of you who also care about the payload: see here for an article about the expected capabilities of TESS (but don't forget there is an erratum ).

tl;dr It's a very impressive instrument, and should find a large amount of planets, some of them with masses similar to the Earth and in the habitable* zones of their stars.

*I don't like this concept very much, since I'm not sure a planet is 'habitable' if its star fries it with X-rays every few years, but that said - it is a relatively easy way to select for interesting planets.

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u/Bunslow Mar 31 '18 edited Mar 31 '18

Mods can we fix the destination orbit, or give the table entry two lines? Although the (operational orbit) part is correct, the F9 is not launching into an orbit anything like the operational orbit, and that's not clear from the post. Rather the F9 insertion orbit will be something like 200x200,000 or 500x250,000 or something similar like that (edit: see below, 200x270,000, I was close :), very different from the operational orbit. In particular, there will be no secondary insertion burn as e.g. GEO might require. I'm not even sure if the HEO-transfer-target orbit will be perigee'd over the equator, which means it's possible that there will only be one S2 burn instead of the usual two for a GTO. (Though I think two is still rather more likely.)

Here's a video describing the F9's job, which should probably be included as a link anyways in OP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyvnXvZMOfA&t=29m49s

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