May 1,  3:00-3:30 pm EST [Noon – 12:30 pm PDT]

Live Google Hangout: “TESS and the Search for Exoplanets” – Ask Your Questions of Drs. George Ricker, Sara Seager and Joshua Winn
(Hosted by The Kavli Foundation)

Following a three-year competition, NASA has selected the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) project at MIT for a planned launch in 2017. TESS will use an array of wide-field cameras to perform an all-sky survey to discover planets outside our own solar system as they periodically transit their host stars. TESS will carry out the first space-based all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times more of the sky as any previous mission.

Do the sun’s closest stellar neighbors harbor planets? Are there hundreds of Earth-size planets in our own galactic neighborhood? On Wednesday May 1, 3:00-3:30 pm EST [12:00-12:30pm PDT], we will ask your questions about TESS and the search for new planets with three leading researchers on NASA’s TESS team:  

• GEORGE RICKER is principal investigator of the TESS mission and a senior research scientist at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI) in Cambridge, Mass.
• SARA SEAGER is a professor of planetary science and physics at MKI and a member of the TESS team. Seager’s research focuses on computer models of exoplanet atmospheres, interiors and biosignatures.
• JOSHUA WINN is an associate professor of physics at MKI and deputy science director for the TESS mission. Winn is interested in the properties of planets around other stars, how planets form and evolve, and whether there are habitable planets beyond Earth.

Ask your questions: Questions can be submitted before or during the webcast. Email questions to info@kavlifoundation.org or send a message on Twitter with the hashtag #KavliAstro.

Hangout address: This hangout will be available at: http://www.kavlifoundation.org/science-spotlights/spotlight-live-tess-search-exoplanets