The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, a space probe designed to search for an exoplanet and launched into orbit in 2018, went into safe operation after a computer failure on September 10, which was reported by the NASA Space Agency of the United States.
It was originally planned that the machine would remain operational for two years, but after the end of that period it would remain operational, and during its operation it had identified more than 250 planets outside the solar system and thousands of potential exoplanet candidates.
On Monday, NASA reported that TESS had suddenly moved to secure mode, stopping observations. The mission team concluded that the transition was due to the rebooting of the facility ' s on-board computer. The machine is now in a stable state and the observations collected but not yet sent to Earth are likely to be safe. The TESS team is now working to restore the probe ' s functionality, although this process may take a few days.
Each month, TESS explores another fragment of the star sky, observing the brightness of the stars. Low-intensity rhythmic "darkness" can indicate that the probe is viewed by a planet that runs in the background of a star's disk. Although the mission was specifically designed to search for an exoplanet, astronomers also use TESS data to study comets, supernovas and dual-star systems, as well as other space objects.