Uploaded December 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Using the analogy of a “Star Wash,” this video explains how raw data of nearby, bright stars collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is processed and made ready for scientific investigation. The data is processed at the Science Processing Operations Center at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, and it is examined by the science team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). TESS is NASA’s new planet-hunting mission and is expected to find thousands of new worlds in our solar neighborhood.
TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Dr. George Ricker of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research serves as principal investigator for the mission. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.
Video credit: NASA/Ames Research Center
Learn more: nasa.gov/ames/tess-pipeline
NASA's Ames Research Center is located in California's Silicon Valley. Follow us on social media to hear about the latest developments in space, science, technology and aeronautics.
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Using the analogy of a “Star Wash,” this video explains how raw data of nearby, bright stars collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is processed and made ready for scientific investigation. The data is processed at the Science Processing Operations Center at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, and it is examined by the science team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). TESS is NASA’s new planet-hunting mission and is expected to find thousands of new worlds in our solar neighborhood.
TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Dr. George Ricker of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research serves as principal investigator for the mission. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.
Video credit: NASA/Ames Research Center
Learn more: nasa.gov/ames/tess-pipeline
NASA's Ames Research Center is located in California's Silicon Valley. Follow us on social media to hear about the latest developments in space, science, technology and aeronautics.
facebook.com/nasaames
twitter.com/nasaames
instagram.com/nasaames
