Wednesday, June 4, 2008

NASA names MIT group a finalist in satellite program

By Mass High Tech Staff

NASA has chosen a planet-searching satellite developed by MIT, NASA-Ames and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as one of six recipients to receive $750,000 for a six-month feasibility study. By 2009, two of the six spacecraft proposals for NASA’s Small Explorer (SMEX) satellite program will be chosen for development at cost of up to $105 million. The satellites will be launched by 2012.

The group’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) would view the whole sky using six wide-angle cameras and high-resolution electronic detectors. The satellite would detect planets orbiting other stars, and the group says within two years, it should find more than a thousand planetary systems. Any new planetary discoveries could then use the planned launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2013 for closer observation.

A Google Inc. seed grant has jump-started the development of TESS’s high-resolution, wide-angle digital cameras. Additional funding for the satellite has come from the Kavli Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, MIT alumnus Rick Tavan, and other donors.