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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Bangladesh Supreme Court acquits former prime minister Khaleda Zia
Dhaka, Jan 15: Bangladesh Supreme Court on Wednesday acquitted former prime minister and BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia in a corruption case, overturning the High Court’s earlier 10-year prison sentence.
The verdict was delivered by a bench led by Chief Justice Dr Syed Refaat Ahmed after reviewing 79-year-old Zia’s appeal against the High Court’s ruling on Wednesday, the Dhaka Tribune reported.
The Supreme Court acquitted Zia, the party’s Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman, and all other suspects in their appeal over the Zia Orphanage Trust graft case, the report added.
The Appellate Division noted that the case was motivated by revenge.
Zia was sentenced on February 8, 2018, by Dhaka’s Special Judge Court-5 to five years of imprisonment for alleged embezzlement of government funds in the name of the Zia Orphanage Trust.
The same verdict handed down 10 years of rigorous imprisonment for five other accused, including Zia's son Tarique and former chief secretary Kamal Uddin Siddiqui. Each of the accused was also fined Tk2.1 crore.
Among the accused, Tarique, Siddiqui, and Ziaur Rahman’s nephew Mominur Rahman have remained absconding.
Zia appealed the trial court’s verdict to the High Court, but the sentence was increased to 10 years by a High Court bench comprising Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Md Mostafizur Rahman on October 30, 2018.
Zia subsequently filed a leave-to-appeal petition against this sentence.
Following years of delays due to legal procedural issues and a lack of initiative from lawyers, the Appellate Division accepted Zia’s leave-to-appeal on November 11, 2024.
The court also stayed the High Court’s 10-year sentence pending the final hearing of the appeal.
After concluding the hearing, the Appellate Division announced its decision to acquit Zia, officially clearing her of the charges in the case.
Zia is ailing and travelled to London earlier this month for medical treatment.
Zia served as the prime minister of Bangladesh from March 1991 to March 1996, and again from June 2001 to October 2006.
