How do we spot something as tiny and faint as a planet trillions of miles away? The trick is to look at the star! So far, most of the exoplanets – worlds beyond our solar system – we’ve found were detected by looking for tiny dips in the brightness of their host stars! These dips are caused by the planet passing between us and its star – an event called a “transit.” Our newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), will seek out transits around 200,000 of the nearest and brightest stars in the sky. TESS is slated to launch tomorrow, April 18, at 6:51 p.m. EDT on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Credit: @NASAGoddard #nasa #space #exoplanets #planets #astronomy #satellite #picoftheday #spacecraft #tess #science #nasatess #habitableplanets #star #NewWorlds #astrophysics #launch #transit #solarsystem