TESS is in orbit!

A lot of very happy people on the NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration TESS mission team today. At 6:51 ET the TESS spacecraft was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral on a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster and carried into orbit. As of the time of writing, it has just successfully deployed its solar arrays and is broadcasting telemetry to mission control. Wow! We are very happy and proud to have been given the opportunity to play a very tiny part in this amazing venture (with apologies for the quality of the photos which were snapped from a TV during the live stream).