Inside the Clean Room with NASA's TESS Exoplanet Hunter (Images)

By Amy Thompson, Space.com Contributor | April 10, 2018 07:19am ET

Planet Hunter

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is compact but mighty, with a body just 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide. This planet hunter may end up discovering more alien worlds than NASA's famous Kepler space telescope.

3D Printing

Engineers used 3D-printed parts to ensure that TESS would fit together just right.

ISO Planets

These four cameras are designed to allow TESS to spot a plethora of new and exciting exoplanet candidates in our own cosmic backyard.

Better to See

Each of the spacecraft’s four cameras is outfitted with a lens just like this one.

More to View

The spacecraft’s ultra-sensitive CCD cameras will collect the photons of 200,000 nearby stars, while searching for exoplanets. TESS will see much more of the sky than did Kepler, which focused on a single patch of sky during its four-year primary mission.

Just in Case

Suit up! Wearing protective clothing, known as a bunny suit, is a must for any clean-room visit, to ensure the spacecraft is not contaminated or the instruments damaged in any way.

Getting Ready to Go

A view of TESS in the clean room as engineers prepare it for its planned April 16, 2018 launch.

Testing, Testing

Engineers prepare to test TESS' solar arrays prior to the spacecraft's mating to its launch vehicle, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Mode of Transport

TESS will beam data back to Earth via a high-gain antenna, a silver, saucer-shaped instrument on the left side of the spacecraft.

More Than Meets the Eye

The TESS science team hopes to see images like this one when the satellite sends its first batch of data back to Earth, explained mission principal investigator George Ricker, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) explained. This image was taken with an engineering model of a TESS camera from a rooftop on the MIT campus.