TESS Status

NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) returned to science operations on January 18 after entering safe mode on January 15. The issue arose when TESS's solar panels did not rotate to remain pointed at the Sun, resulting in a slow discharge of the satellite's batteries.

The TESS mission is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Launched in 2018, TESS has been scanning almost the entire sky looking for planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets.

TESS has also uncovered other cosmic phenomena, including star-shredding black holes and stellar oscillations. Data from TESS is publicly available through archives at the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.