The UofL is part of the ground-based team for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) program, which launched in spring 2018 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.��

The mission is to identify Earth-like planets revolving around nearby stars, with the UofL team helping verify results and figuring out the characteristics of the discovered planets.

The program has identified 20-some planets in its first year. According��, citing a study in that includes a “rocky super-Earth” and two “sub-Neptunes.”

These three help fill in��our understanding of how planets form, the article said, because they’re somewhere in between planets like Earth — rocky and small — and��Neptune — gaseous and big.

“There’s kind of a gap in examples between these two,” said��Dr. John Kielkopf, a professor of physics and astronomy at UofL and member of the TESS team.

The TESS satellite will search about 85 percent of the sky for planets over two years. The images will be somewhat low-resolution and cover huge sections of sky, so there will be some blending of stars with one another.��

The data and management for the TESS program are led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The ground-based partners, including UofL and its Moore Observatory, in Crestwood, Kentucky, will help check the information collected by the satellite, and expand on it.

“The data come back to us, and we analyze it to measure the transit events precisely, or in some cases to show that the event does not happen, or is mimicked by some other event,” Kielkopf said.��“Our measurements improve on the precision of the satellite, and are used to find the radius of the planets and the exact times at which they pass in front of the star.��

Dr. Karen Collins, who is leading the TESS follow-up program through Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, helped develop the software behind this research as part of her doctoral studies in the department of Physics and Astronomy at UofL. The software she developed is now widely used for studying planet candidates identified by the Kepler satellite and for TESS followup.

In addition to UofL’s Moore Observatory, university researchers and students will work with UofL’s telescopes at the Mt. Lemmon (Arizona) and Mt. Kent (Australia) observatories. The telescopes will use photometry and spectroscopy to measure the brightness of the star and speed of the planet’s orbit, in collaboration with the University of Southern Queensland.

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Although only 6 years old and getting ready to enter first grade at St. Mary of the Knobs Catholic school in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, Olivia was given special permission to attend the camp that is designed for rising 2nd to 4th graders. That is because despite her young age, Olivia is already so passionate about becoming an astronaut that she is learning to speak Russian so she can communicate on the International Space Station and plays soccer and field hockey to ensure she will have the necessary physical stamina.

The Belicove family, transplants to New Albany, Indiana, from Rochester, New York, discovered Gheens Science Hall and Rauch Planetarium soon after moving to the area. Olivia had been enamored with all things space since she was just 4 years old and watched the “Ready Jet Go!” PBS Kids show that introduces children aged 3 to 8 to space, earth science and technology.

Olivia became a frequent GSH&RP visitor, using money she received at Christmas to buy a family membership. When Olivia went to the Women’s History Month keynote presentation at the planetarium in March, she met the speaker, Sophia Mitchell, a NASA aerospace engineer and Louisville native. Sophia spent a great deal of time talking with Olivia, encouraging her to pursue her dreams. She gave Olivia her email address in order to stay in touch.

Olivia is using the children’s book “Astronaut’s Handbook” to plot her course. Rather than cartoons, she prefers to watch major space events on television such as NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson making her record-breaking spacewalk or the SpaceX Dragon docking with the ISS in the wee hours of the morning. When the family asked Olivia where she wanted to go on vacation this year, rather than opting for Disney World, she chose the Kennedy Space Center, where she got to meet astronauts and watch lots of space videos.

During camp this summer, Olivia bonded with camp leader and planetarium educator Brenna Ausbrooks, who has her bachelor of science degree in physics with an emphasis in astrophysics, a master of arts degree in teaching in high school physics and is working on her doctorate in curriculum development.

“Next summer cannot come soon enough for Olivia to go to camp again,” said Olivia’s mom, Jamie.

The author is Paula McGuffey, assistant director of GSH&RP.