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Space telescope data has underpinned 1.5 million+ scientific papers since 1990.
| Attribute | TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) NASA · 🇺🇸 Active · Last updated 2026-06-01Trust: Agency-primaryⓘ Last verified Remove × | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency | NASA | NASA | NASA |
| Status | Active | Retired | Retired |
| Wavelength band | optical | optical | infrared |
| Launch year | 2018 | 2009 – 2018 | 2003 – 2020 |
| Orbit | High Earth orbit (P/2 lunar resonance orbit) | Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit | Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit |
| Mirror / aperture | — | 1.4 mas of [1] ↑ Largest | 0.85 mas of [1] |
| Mass | 362 kgas of [1] | 1,052 kgas of [1] ↑ Heaviest | 950 kgas of [1] |
| Wavelength range | 0.6–1.0 μm (red optical) | 0.43–0.89 μm (optical) | 3.6–160 μm (mid-to-far infrared) |
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| Summary | NASA's all-sky transit photometry survey, successor to Kepler. TESS monitors nearly the entire sky in 27-day sectors using four wide-field cameras, targeting the 200,000 brightest stars nearest to Earth. Its targets are close enough for atmospheric follow-up by ground telescopes and JWST. | The mission that proved planets are abundant throughout the galaxy. Kepler monitored 150,000+ stars continuously for 4 years, finding that most stars host planets. A reaction wheel failure in 2013 ended the primary mission; the repurposed K2 mission (2014–2018) found 1,000+ additional planets before fuel ran out. | NASA's infrared Great Observatory, operating 2003–2020. Best known for discovering the TRAPPIST-1 system of 7 Earth-sized planets, including 3 in the habitable zone (with ground telescopes). Ran out of cryogen in 2009 but continued 'warm mission' until retirement in January 2020. |
All 9 major space telescopes with primary-source citations from NASA, ESA, STScI, and JPL. Pure URL state — bookmark or share the link and the comparison reproduces exactly.