What is TESS?

TESS is like a super detective that looks at faraway stars to find hidden planets hiding around them.

Imagine you're in a dark room with a flashlight, and you shine it on the wall, you can see the shadow of anything blocking the light. TESS does something similar, but way out in space! It shines its light on stars, and when a planet passes by, it blocks some of the star’s light, just like your hand blocking part of the flashlight beam.

TESS takes pictures of the sky in pieces, kind of like how you put together a puzzle. Each picture helps it see if anything is passing in front of a star. If it sees the light getting dimmer, that means there's probably a planet doing the blocking!

Sometimes, these hidden planets are just like Earth, they might even have water or air! Scientists use what TESS finds to learn more about other worlds and maybe one day find life out in space.