BREAKTHROUGH Listen, an organization, which scans the stars in the hope of finding alien signals, has announced it will be teaming up with NASA in the hunt for aliens.

Making the announcement at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington, D.C., Breakthrough Listen bosses said they will collaborate with scientists on NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) — which looks for planets outside the solar system. Together, the teams hope to answer the age-old question: Are we alone?

By analyzing data from TESS scientists will be able to determine which distant planets they should focus on in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

The US$337 million space telescope, which is no larger than a refrigerator, uses an array of wide-field cameras to perform a survey of 85 percent of the sky during its two-year prime mission.

TESS is capable of studying the mass, size, density and orbit of a large cohort of small planets, including a sample of rocky planets in the habitable zones of their host stars.

The satellite works by searching for telltale brightness dips potentially indicating planetary “transits” — the passages of orbiting worlds across their parent stars’ faces.

NASA and Breakthrough were encouraged by the discovery of Boyajian’s Star as they joined the hunt for aliens.

Boyajian’s Star was first spotted by online astronomers Planet Hunters in 2015, which appeared to be dipping in brightness.

(SD-Agencies)

Dr Andrew Siemion, leader of the Breakthrough Listen science team at the University of California, said: “The discovery by the Kepler spacecraft of Boyajian’s Star, an object with wild, and apparently random, variations in its lightcurve, sparked great excitement and a range of possible explanations, of which megastructures were just one.

“Follow-up observations have suggested that dust particles in orbit around the star are responsible for the dimming, but studies of anomalies like this are expanding our knowledge of astrophysics, as well as casting a wider net in the search for technosignatures.”

NASA’s TESS Satellite Takes Off to Search for Alien Life

The US$337 million space telescope is no larger than a refrigerator but it has a big mission ahead, as it will search for alien worlds around stars and planets.

NASA’s newest planet-hunting spacecraft is equipped with four sensitive cameras, and it is set to reach the Moon in mid-June.

It has been designed as a successor to the Kepler space observatory.

Like Kepler, TESS will search for alien planets using the “transit method,” recording the tiny brightness dips these worlds cause as they cross their host stars’ faces.

But TESS differs from Kepler in its orbit. Whereas Kepler circles around the sun in a heliocentric orbit, TESS will fly around in an extreme elliptical, 13.7-day orbit that will be a first of its kind, as no manmade object has ever done so before.

TESS will carry out a broad sky survey during its two-year prime mission, covering about 85 percent of the sky. The satellite will focus on the nearest and brightest stars.

“TESS is the first step toward finding habitable planets,” mission project scientist Stephen Rinehart said during a briefing.