Washington, April 17: NASA is now targeting Wednesday for the launch of its next planet-hunting mission, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or Tess.
The spacecraft was earlier scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Monday (4.02 a.m. on Tuesday, India time).
"Standing down today to conduct additional GNC (guidance, navigation and control) analysis, and teams are now working towards a targeted launch of @NASA_TESS on Wednesday, April 18," SpaceX said in a tweet on Monday .
NASA in a blog post said that the Tess spacecraft is in excellent health, and remains ready for launch.
Tess is NASA's next step in the search for exoplanets, including those that could support life.
Once in orbit, Tess will spend about two years surveying 200,000 of the brightest stars near the Sun to search for planets outside our solar system.
It will find the most promising exoplanets orbiting relatively nearby stars, giving future researchers a rich set of new targets for more comprehensive follow-up studies, including the potential to assess their capacity to harbour life.
With the help of a gravitational assist from the Moon, the spacecraft will settle into a 13.7-day orbit around Earth, NASA said in an earlier statement.
Sixty days after the launch and following tests of its instruments, the satellite will begin its initial two-year mission. Four wide-field cameras will give Tess a field-of-view that covers 85 percent of our entire sky.
Within this vast visual perspective, the sky has been divided into 26 sectors that Tess will observe one by one.
The first year of observations will map the 13 sectors encompassing the southern sky, and the second year will map the 13 sectors of the northern sky.
The spacecraft will be looking for a phenomenon known as a transit, where a planet passes in front of its star, causing a periodic and regular dip in the star's brightness.
NASA's Kepler spacecraft used the same method to spot more than 2,600 confirmed exoplanets, most of them orbiting faint stars 300 to 3,000 light-years away.
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Govt committed to implementing internal reservation for SCs, after survey: CM Siddaramaiah
Bengaluru, Apr 5 (PTI): Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday reaffirmed his government's committment to providing internal reservation among Scheduled Castes (SC), and emphasised that there should be no doubts about it.
He said Justice H N Nagmohan Das Commission has been given two months to conduct the survey, following which internal reservation will be implemented by ensuring no injustice is done to anyone.
"There should be no doubt about internal reservation. We will implement it. Even if you say no, we will implement it. We will definitely follow the Supreme Court order."
Speaking at the event to mark the 118th birth anniversary of Dr Babu Jagjivan Ram, he said, "Justice Nagamohan Das has asked for a two-month time. We have given it. Will implement it by ensuring that no injustice is done to any one."
On March 27, the Karnataka cabinet approved a survey of SCs in the state, following the acceptance of the interim report by Justice Nagmohan Das Commission. The survey will help determine the implementation of internal reservation among SCs.
The one-man commission of the retired High Court judge has been tasked with overseeing the survey and gathering empirical data. A timeline of 60 days has been set to complete the process and submit the report to the government.
A section of SCs, like 'SC Left', has been demanding internal reservation, alleging that only a few influential sub-castes were taking away a majority of the benefits, while many communities were still marginalised.
The internal reservation is aimed at slicing up the 17 per cent reservation matrix given to 101 scheduled castes.
The government, in November last year, had appointed Nagmohan Das to head a commission to recommend internal reservation among SCs, after the Supreme Court last year allowed the states to provide internal reservation, and the state cabinet agreed to implement internal reservation.
In a landmark verdict delivered by the Supreme Court on August 1 last year, it held that states are constitutionally empowered to make sub-classifications within the SCs, which form a socially heterogeneous class, for granting reservation for the uplift of castes that are socially and educationally more backward.
In his address, Siddaramaiah opined that reservation is here to stay, as it is unlikely to be opposed in today’s age.
"No one says reservation should go, because everybody has taken its benefit," he said.
"After Narendra Modi became the prime minister, he gave 10 per cent reservation for the economically weaker (ESW) sections. That means everybody gets a reservation. No one opposes reservation now. Even those who opposed it have benefitted," he added.
