CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Calling all planets that orbit around bright, nearby stars: NASA's new Tess spacecraft is looking to do a head count. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, also known as TESS, will survey the sky over the course of two years, attempting to find planets orbiting bright stars outside the solar system, according to NASA. The spacecraft aims to add thousands of exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system, to the galactic map for future study. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), was supposed to launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in the early hours today. With Kepler running low on fuel and nearing the end of its life, TESS aims to pick up the search while focusing closer, on planets dozens to hundreds of light years away. The next opportunity to blast off the $337 million satellite — which aims to advance the search for extraterrestrial life by scanning the skies for nearby, Earth-like planets will be Wednesday. The planets could be rocky, like Earth; gas giants, like Jupiter; or “something even more unusual.”

Astronomers in the future, including those working with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, are then expected to be able to study the atmospheres of many of the planets.
SpaceX's scheduled launch of NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is delayed until April 18. TESS is designed to search for exoplanets using the transit method and is 400 times more powerful than the Kepler space observatory.