NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

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December 16, 2014 NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite NASA has selected SpaceX to provide launch services for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. TESS will launch aboard a Falcon 9 v1.1 launch vehicle, with liftoff targeted for August 2017 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The total cost for NASA to launch TESS is approximately $87 million, which includes the launch service, spacecraft processing, payload integration, tracking, data and telemetry, and other launch support requirements. TESS’s science goal is to detect transiting exoplanets orbiting nearby bright stars. During a three-year funded science mission, TESS will sample hundreds of thousands of stars in order to detect a large sample of exoplanets, with an emphasis on discovering Earth- and super-Earth-sized planets in the solar neighborhood. The Launch Services Program at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for management and oversight of the Falcon 9 v1.1 launch services for TESS. The TESS Mission is led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with oversight by the Explorers Program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. For more information about NASA programs and missions, visit: http://www.nasa.gov For more information about NASA's Launch Services Program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/launchservices -end- George Diller Kennedy Space Center, Fla. 321-867-2468 george.h.diller@nasa.gov NASA Kennedy Space Center news releases and other information are available automatically by sending an e-mail message with the subject line subscribe to ksc-request@newsletters.nasa.gov. To unsubscribe, send an e-mail message with the subject line unsubscribe to ksc-request@newsletters.nasa.gov.   › Back To Top