NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
Amber Biology is very excited to have been hired as a contractor for NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission. Due to be launched from Cape Canaveral as early as March 2018, the TESS spacecraft will search for exoplanets orbiting distant stars, that could potentially be earth-like worlds on which liquid water could exist, and which may also have the right kind of conditions to support life. Although most of the computational work we are doing is in the field of astrophysics, this is an origin of life project and therefore still arguably biology!
Amber Biology has been involved in the creation of code involved in both the imaging processing for the spacecraft itself, and the data analysis pipeline that scientists on the ground will use to process the images that the spacecraft sends back to earth on each closest approach of its orbit.
As members of the mission team, the partners at Amber Biology also got to sign the metal plaque that bears all the signatures of the mission team, and will be attached to the spacecraft.
