Welcome to the second update about Sector 1751, TESS’s special observation of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS! We have some updates on the status of the observations and the data availability.

Notification of anomaly and data gap: TESS completed 18 hours of Sector 1751 observations before entering safe mode on ...

Welcome to the first update about Sector 1751, TESS’s special observation of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS!

Sector start and end times: Sector 1751 began 2026 January 15 around 6:00 UTC and ends 2026 January 22 around 12:00 UTC. This is an ecliptic pointing, with the comet’s ...

Over the summer, we announced that 22 proposals requesting funding via TESS Cycle 8 were being held in a “selectable” state, pending clarification of budget and programmatic priorities. This week, we are inviting 14 of the 22 proposals to submit Phase 2 budget proposals to NASA. Eight proposals will continue ...

Welcome TESS followers to our latest news bulletin!

This week, we are looking at three recent papers from the archive. Enjoy, and happy holidays!

First is a double feature highlighting the precovery observations from TESS of 3I/ATLAS– the third known interstellar object passing through the Solar system. These objects ...

TESS Special Observation of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS (January 2026)

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will conduct a special observation of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in January 2026, temporarily interrupting Sector 99 to capture this rare opportunity to observe this object from another solar system. TESS's high-precision, continuous photometry ...