The launch of NASA's new planet-seeking satellite has been delayed for at least 48 hours.

The much-anticipated launch of NASA’s newest exoplanet hunter has been rescheduled, the U.S. space agency announced in a brief news release.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey (TESS) satellite was supposed to lift off from the NASA launchpad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Monday (April 16) evening at 6:32 p.m. EDT (22:32 GMT).

However, an issue with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which will blast off from Space Launch Complex 40 carrying NASA’s planet-seeking spacecraft, has forced the company to scrub the first attempt to launch the TESS satellite.

The reason for the delay seems to be a problem with the rocket’s side, Space.com reports.

To fix the Falcon 9 issue, the SpaceX launch crew need additional time to conduct an analysis of the rocket’s Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) system, NASA explained in the news release.

Therefore, the TESS launch has been postponed until tomorrow (April 18) at the earliest, as both NASA and SpaceX are working together to prepare the rocket for liftoff.

NASA representatives wrote on Twitter that the TESS spacecraft, operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is “in excellent health” and awaits patiently for the rescheduled launch time.

Shortly before NASA’s social media announcement, the SpaceX launch team tweeted that they were standing down and that the TESS launch had been put off until tomorrow.

People waiting to see the live coverage of the big launch will have to wait at least 48 hours. The broadcast, originally set to air yesterday at 6 p.m., has been scrubbed until the Falcon 9 problem is addressed and the TESS launch is back on schedule.

According to Spaceflight Now, the rescheduled TESS launch will probably take place tomorrow at 6:51 p.m. EDT (22:51 GMT), depending on the spacecraft’s orbital target and the position of the moon.

The moon’s position is relevant in the novel type of orbit NASA has chosen for the TESS satellite. The planet-hunting spacecraft will use a special, highly-elliptical orbit, with a 2:1 lunar resonance, shows Spaceflight 101.

This will ensure that TESS reaches apogee with the moon at a phasing of 90 degrees, allowing its orbit to remain stable for at least 10 years.

This highly-elliptical orbit will help maximize TESS’s field of vision, making it possible for the satellite’s four cameras to image up to 85 percent of the sky.

“That is about 20 times what the Kepler mission was able to detect,” George Ricker, TESS principal investigator at MIT, said in a statement.

TESS’s prime mission is to survey up to 200,000 stars for a period of two years, with the goal of finding potential exoplanets that might be orbiting them.

NASA estimates that its exoplanet-seeking satellite will track down around 20,000 planets beyond our solar system, Phys.org reports.</s>NASA’s powerful, planet-hunting satellite TESS was supposed to launch into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 on Monday, but plans were nixed at the last moment due to unspecified complications. The satellite is designed to search for evidence of exoplanets — that is, planets outside of our own Solar System — and scientists are excited about what they might find. But before the work can begin, the spacecraft has to actually reach orbit, and that’s SpaceX’s job. The launch was slated to take place from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Monday evening, but was pushed back so that SpaceX could “conduct additional GNC analysis.”

The launch, which is now scheduled for Wednesday, will feature a brand new Falcon 9, as opposed to the used (sorry, “flight proven”) rockets that the company sometimes uses after recovering and refurbishing them. The first stage of the rocket will tumble back down to Earth and, if all goes according to plan, SpaceX will recover it on a drone ship positioned in the Atlantic Ocean.

As it has already attempted twice, SpaceX will also try to recover the payload fairing, which is a two-piece section of the spacecraft’s nosecone situated at its top. In the past, the company has tried to capture one half of the fairing with a massive net attached to a ship, but both of those attempts failed. This time, the fairing halves will glide back down to the ocean on parachutes, and SpaceX hopes that they will be in good shape after splashdown.

Once in orbit, the TESS satellite will stretch its solar panels and begin powering itself, and while the exact timeline of its scientific mission could vary depending on many factors, it should begin peering into the depths of space soon. Hunting for exoplanets is no easy task, and it’s only been within the last few years that exoplanet discoveries have begun to ramp up. TESS promises to continue that trend as it hunts for unseen worlds many light years away.

SpaceX hasn’t provided my additional details regarding the delay of the launch, but we know that “GNC” means “guidance, navigation and control,” so it sounds like it was a pretty serious issue. When you’re ferrying NASA hardware to space, it’s important to get it right, so hopefully all of SpaceX’s systems are in good shape for Wednesday’s launch.</s>(CNN) TESS, NASA's planet-hunting satellite, launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 6:51 p.m. ET Wednesday. It had a 30-second launch window. The launch was originally scheduled for Monday, but rescheduled to conduct additional Guidance Navigation and Control analysis, the agency said.

The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket was able to land on the droneship minutes later.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is NASA's next mission in the search for exoplanets, or those that are outside our solar system, and TESS will be on the lookout for planets that could support life.

After launch, TESS will use its fuel to reach orbit around the Earth, with a gravity assist from the moon. That will enable it to have a long-term mission beyond its two-year objective.

"The Moon and the satellite are in a sort of dance," Joel Villasenor, instrument scientist for TESS at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a statement. "The Moon pulls the satellite on one side, and by the time TESS completes one orbit, the Moon is on the other side tugging in the opposite direction. The overall effect is the Moon's pull is evened out, and it's a very stable configuration over many years. Nobody's done this before, and I suspect other programs will try to use this orbit later on."

Over 60 days, TESS will establish an orbit around Earth and test its instruments. Then, the two-year mission will officially begin.

What will TESS do?

TESS will pick up the search for exoplanets as the Kepler Space Telescope runs out of fuel.

Kepler , which has discovered more than 4,500 potential planets and confirmed exoplanets, launched in 2009. After mechanical failure in 2013, it entered a new phase of campaigns to survey other areas of the sky for exoplanets, called the K2 mission. This enabled researchers to discover even more exoplanets, understand the evolution of stars and gain insight about supernovae and black holes.

Soon, Kepler's mission will end, and it will be abandoned in space, orbiting the sun and never getting any closer to Earth than the moon.

TESS will survey an area 400 times larger than what Kepler observed. This includes 200,000 of the brightest nearby stars. Over the course of two years, the four wide-field cameras on board will stare at different sectors of the sky for days at a time.

TESS will begin by looking at the Southern Hemisphere sky for the first year and move to the Northern Hemisphere in the second year. It can accomplish this lofty goal by dividing the sky into 13 sections and looking at each one for 27 days before moving on to the next.

The satellite itself is not much bigger than a refrigerator. The cameras sit on top, beneath a cone that will protect them from radiation.

TESS will look for exoplanets using the transit method, observing slight dips in the brightness of stars as planets pass in front of them. Bright stars allow for easier followup study through ground- and space-based telescopes.

"TESS is helping us explore our place in the universe," said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters. "Until 20 years ago, we didn't know of any planets beyond our own solar system. We've expanded our understanding of our place in the universe, and TESS will help us keep expanding."

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is scheduled to launch this week.

The cameras can detect light across a broad range of wavelengths, up to infrared. This means TESS will be able to look at many nearby small, cool red dwarf stars and see whether there are exoplanets around them. Red dwarf stars have been found to host exoplanets within the habitable zone , and many astronomers believe they could be the best candidate for hosting Earth-size exoplanets with conditions suitable for life.

What makes TESS different

NASA expects TESS to allow for the cataloging of more than 1,500 exoplanets, but it has the potential to find thousands. Of these, officials anticipate, 300 will be Earth-size exoplanets or double-Earth-size Super Earths. Those could be the best candidates for supporting life outside our solar system. Like Earth, they are small, rocky and usually within the habitable zone of their stars, meaning liquid water can exist on their surface.

"One of the biggest questions in exoplanet exploration is: If an astronomer finds a planet in a star's habitable zone, will it be interesting from a biologist's point of view?" said George Ricker, TESS principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research in Cambridge. "We expect TESS will discover a number of planets whose atmospheric compositions, which hold potential clues to the presence of life, could be precisely measured by future observers."

These exoplanets will be studied so that NASA can determine which are the best targets for missions like the James Webb Space Telescope. That telescope, whose launch was just pushed back to 2020 , would be able to characterize the details and atmospheres of exoplanets in ways scientists have not been able to do.

"We learned from Kepler that there are more planets than stars in our sky, and now TESS will open our eyes to the variety of planets around some of the closest stars," Hertz said. "TESS will cast a wider net than ever before for enigmatic worlds whose properties can be probed by NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope and other missions."

Technicians help prepare the spacecraft for its mission.

NASA believes that TESS will build on Kepler's momentum and open the study of exoplanets in unprecedented ways.

"TESS is opening a door for a whole new kind of study," said Stephen Rinehart, TESS project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "We're going to be able study individual planets and start talking about the differences between planets. The targets TESS finds are going to be fantastic subjects for research for decades to come. It's the beginning of a new era of exoplanet research. I don't think we know everything TESS is going to accomplish. To me, the most exciting part of any mission is the unexpected result, the one that nobody saw coming."

The search for life

More than a decade ago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists first proposed the idea of a mission like TESS. They have been instrumental in bringing the mission from idea to reality and will continue to be involved once the mission launches. A science team devoted to TESS at MIT aims to measure the masses of at least 50 small exoplanets that have a radius of less than four times that of Earth -- an ideal dimension that could suggest habitability.

"Mass is a defining planetary characteristic," said Sara Seager, TESS deputy director of science at MIT. "If you just know that a planet is twice the size of Earth, it could be a lot of things: a rocky world with a thin atmosphere, or what we call a 'mini-Neptune' -- a rocky world with a giant gas envelope, where it would be a huge greenhouse blanket, and there would be no life on the surface. So mass and size together give us an average planet density, which tells us a huge amount about what the planet is."

TESS Objects of Interest, an MIT-led effort, will look for objects in TESS' data that could be exoplanets and catalog them.

"TESS is kind of like a scout," said Natalia Guerrero, deputy manager of TESS Objects of Interest. "We're on this scenic tour of the whole sky, and in some ways we have no idea what we will see. It's like we're making a treasure map: Here are all these cool things. Now, go after them."

TESS data will also be publicly available so that anyone can download them and search for exoplanets. A data pipeline has been established so that TESS can fulfill its mission. It will collect about 27 gigabytes per day -- that's about 6,500 song files -- and send data back every two weeks.

NASA's Pleiades, an incredibly powerful supercomputer, will be able to keep up and process the 10 billion pixels over three to five days.

The more people that look through the data, the better, the scientists believe. This could be how planets that support life are found.

"There's no science that will tell us life is out there right now, except that small rocky planets appear to be incredibly common," Seager said. "They appear to be everywhere we look. So it's got to be there somewhere."</s>After a delay, SpaceX is winding up again to launch NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) today (April 18) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The 30-second launch window of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is set for 6:51 p.m. EDT (2251 GMT), and you can watch the launch live on Space.com's home page starting at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT), courtesy of NASA TV. After launch, the rocket's first stage is set to attempt a landing on the SpaceX drone ship Of Course I Still Love You.

After it reaches space, TESS will maneuver into an oblong orbit around Earth, circling twice for each orbit of the moon. From there, it will search for a telltale darkening of stars as planets pass in front of them. It will use this technique to identify exoplanets relatively near to Earth that could be investigated by future telescopes, such as the James Webb. It will build on the work of the Kepler space telescope, which found exoplanets in a similar way but circled the sun, rather than Earth, and focused on one small patch of the sky for its first mission. Kepler has identified 2,650 exoplanets to date, which is more than 70 percent of all known, alien worlds.

The TESS launch was called off April 16 to allow scientists to conduct more guidance navigation and control analysis of the rocket, NASA officials wrote on Twitter. "The @NASA_TESS spacecraft is in excellent health and remains ready for launch on the new targeted date of Wednesday, April 18," they added. NASA's Kennedy Space Center also confirmed on Twitter that the launch would proceed April 18, and SpaceX posted that everything was looking good this morning.

Weather is looking good for today's launch, with the Air Force's 45th Space Wing weather squadron forecasting that conditions will be more than 90 percent favorable for the launch.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.</s>Falcon 9 and @NASA_TESS are vertical on Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Weather is 80% favorable for today’s launch at 6:32 p.m. EDT, 22:32 UTC. pic.twitter.com/eEgVxT24No</s>The launch of NASA's new planet-seeking satellite has been delayed for at least 48 hours.

The much-anticipated launch of NASA’s newest exoplanet hunter has been rescheduled, the U.S. space agency announced in a brief news release.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey (TESS) satellite was supposed to lift off from the NASA launchpad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Monday (April 16) evening at 6:32 p.m. EDT (22:32 GMT).

However, an issue with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which will blast off from Space Launch Complex 40 carrying NASA’s planet-seeking spacecraft, has forced the company to scrub the first attempt to launch the TESS satellite.

The reason for the delay seems to be a problem with the rocket’s side, Space.com reports.

To fix the Falcon 9 issue, the SpaceX launch crew need additional time to conduct an analysis of the rocket’s Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) system, NASA explained in the news release.

Therefore, the TESS launch has been postponed until tomorrow (April 18) at the earliest, as both NASA and SpaceX are working together to prepare the rocket for liftoff.

NASA representatives wrote on Twitter that the TESS spacecraft, operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is “in excellent health” and awaits patiently for the rescheduled launch time.

Shortly before NASA’s social media announcement, the SpaceX launch team tweeted that they were standing down and that the TESS launch had been put off until tomorrow.

People waiting to see the live coverage of the big launch will have to wait at least 48 hours. The broadcast, originally set to air yesterday at 6 p.m., has been scrubbed until the Falcon 9 problem is addressed and the TESS launch is back on schedule.

According to Spaceflight Now, the rescheduled TESS launch will probably take place tomorrow at 6:51 p.m. EDT (22:51 GMT), depending on the spacecraft’s orbital target and the position of the moon.

The moon’s position is relevant in the novel type of orbit NASA has chosen for the TESS satellite. The planet-hunting spacecraft will use a special, highly-elliptical orbit, with a 2:1 lunar resonance, shows Spaceflight 101.

This will ensure that TESS reaches apogee with the moon at a phasing of 90 degrees, allowing its orbit to remain stable for at least 10 years.

This highly-elliptical orbit will help maximize TESS’s field of vision, making it possible for the satellite’s four cameras to image up to 85 percent of the sky.

“That is about 20 times what the Kepler mission was able to detect,” George Ricker, TESS principal investigator at MIT, said in a statement.

TESS’s prime mission is to survey up to 200,000 stars for a period of two years, with the goal of finding potential exoplanets that might be orbiting them.

NASA estimates that its exoplanet-seeking satellite will track down around 20,000 planets beyond our solar system, Phys.org reports.</s>SpaceX doesn't land its rockets back on Earth just because it looks cool.

Traditionally, rocket companies only use their rockets once, effectively wasting hardware that cost millions of dollars to build after just one use. These spent rockets are destined to either become space debris or fall back through Earth's atmosphere and burn up, leaving the charred leftovers to plummet into the ocean.

But SpaceX isn't into that model.

The Elon Musk-founded company landed its first Falcon 9 booster back on Earth in 2015, after years of development. In March 2017, SpaceX successfully relaunched a used rocket into space and then landed the expensive equipment back on Earth.

Today, SpaceX regularly brings its rockets safely back to Earth, landing on either the ground or in the ocean, on its drone ships. The company has now successfully performed more than 20 rocket landings, including landing two Falcon Heavy boosters back on land during the rocket's maiden flight in February 2018.

Reusable rocketry is a foundational reason why SpaceX has become one of the world's top rocket companies, just a decade and a half after Musk opened up shop in California with a half-dozen engineers. Reusing rockets lowers the cost of production, and accordingly, reduces launch costs.

As a private company, SpaceX isn't legally required to release its financial reports, like Apple or Facebook, and they're generally tight-lipped about their financial operations. That said, the company has released some vague information about its financials.

When speaking at a space conference about a refurbished SpaceX rocket, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said that "it was substantially less than half" the cost of building a new rocket booster.

The company advertises (to potential customers) that it costs $62 million to launch a Falcon 9 rocket into space. Analysts have mused that using refurbished rockets could lower this launch price by some $20 million — or more.

Increasingly competitive pricing — along with a reliable Falcon 9 rocket — have made SpaceX an attractive rocket vendor to the likes of NASA, private companies, and other nations. These customers hire SpaceX to launch satellites and spacecraft — some that cost hundreds of millions of dollars — into space.

But SpaceX believes its greater ambitions — to visit and set up shop in far-off parts of space like the moon and Mars — also requires reusability.

"The only way we’re going to be exploring the solar system and being able to return — going to other planets and being able to return — is if these systems are reusable," Shotwell said.

Aside from the horror of being stranded on Mars, it would also likely be prohibitively expensive to manufacture a new rocket, with new engines, each time either SpaceX or another company wants to travel into a deeper part of space.

These unsustainable rocket costs contributed to why NASA stopped sending astronauts to the moon in 1972, three years after Neil Armstrong first set foot on the chalky, lunar surface. In 1969, NASA spent over half a billion dollars on four launches of the Saturn V rocket (not including many other missions costs), which today is the equivalent of more than $3.7 billion.

As of April 2018, SpaceX is only reusing the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket. This bottom portion of the rocket contains nine custom-built engines.

Next, SpaceX hopes to reuse the very top of the rocket, called the fairing, which costs some $6 million to build. The company plans to catch the parachuting fairings in a large net attached to a ship.

According to Musk, SpaceX is also considering using a "giant party balloon" to bring another sizeable portion of the Falcon 9 rocket, called the second stage, safely down to Earth. If you can ignore the silly "party balloon" reference, this might be a realistic goal. Using a balloon to float the rocket down could mean that the rocket stage wouldn't need to save fuel required for a powered landing.

SpaceX has certainly had a lot of success sending satellites and goods into Earth's orbit, but it's unknown when the spaceflight company will actually send missions to the moon and beyond.

But for those that choose to journey to those desolate, freezing, inhospitable worlds, there may be comfort in knowing there's a way back home.

"If you go to Mars and don’t like it, it would be great if you can come back," said Shotwell.</s>A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a planet-hunting satellite for NASA was set to take off Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Hawthorne-based SpaceX will begin a live stream before the launch, which is scheduled for 3:51 p.m. Pacific time.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will conduct a two-year survey to find potential planets orbiting stars relatively close to Earth. A drone ship on the Atlantic Ocean will attempt to land the rocket’s first stage booster.

Related: SpaceX plans to build a Mars-bound rocket at Port of Los Angeles

The launch had been scheduled for Monday, but was postponed to conduct additional guidance, navigation and control systems analysis.</s>CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, Fla. — After scrubbing an attempted launch on Monday evening, SpaceX and NASA plan to send a probe into space on Wednesday evening to search for alien worlds.
• SpaceX will try to land booster on drone ship
• SEE BELOW: Join the LIVE CHAT at 6:30 p.m. ▼
• SEE BELOW: WATCH the Falcon 9 launch ▼

The Falcon 9 rocket is set to take off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:51 p.m., Wednesday.

The 200-foot-tall rocket will carry the NASA TESS spacecraft, which stands for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. The probe will hunt and scan for planets outside of our solar system that could support life as humans know it.

During TESS' two-year mission, four cameras will study and catalog 200,000 planet candidates. TESS will survey a larger area than the NASA Kelper probe, which launched in 2009, and find planets that are close enough to check out with Earth-based telescopes.

After the launch attempt, SpaceX will attempt to land the first-stage booster on its drone ship hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic Ocean about 10 minutes after launch. The booster is new and has not flown before.

In addition, SpaceX is now trying to recover its payload fairing — which is the big nose cone on the Falcon 9. SpaceX is hoping to use parachutes to help guide the nose cone to a soft landing on the ocean surface after launch.</s>CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - SpaceX postponed a planned launch on Monday of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying NASA's latest planet-hunting satellite for 48 hours, citing problems with a guidance-navigation control system, launch team officials said.

Blast-off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida has been delayed until at least Wednesday, according to Space Exploration Technologies, which NASA contracted to loft its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, into orbit.

 

 (Reporting by Joey Roulette at Cape Canaveral, Florida; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Sandra Maler)
NASA's TESS exoplanet space telescope, whose launch was initially delayed, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station by SpaceX on a Falcon 9 rocket. The first stage of the rocket successfully landed on SpaceX's autonomous spaceport drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.