NASA's TESS is looking for extraterrestrial life
NASA launched a new satellite via SpaceX last night with the name TESS. That stands for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, and that has the purpose (you’re already) to search for nearby exoplanets planets outside our solar system.
How does that work? TESS is going to view more than 200,000 stars and will see when those stars get darker. This normally means that there is a planet that blocks the light, and that way NASA can see what is floating around the stars. That is the only way to find planets such as the earth because stars can be seen by measuring the heat they emit, but that does not apply to planets.
No direct result
Viewing that light intensity of stars is not possible from the earth, so that gives TESS a unique position to find many more planets than previously possible. We do not have that much in the short term, because then we have to check whether the found planets are in the livable space, as was the case with Proxima B for example, and even though it is so , then we can not immediately see if something is alive on such a planet. NASA is definitely looking for it, but whether they will find it is still the question.
In the first instance, the main point is that we better know which planets are ‘close to’ the earth, whereby you should not forget that these distances are only relatively short. The nearest star after the sun is still more than four light years away from us, or four years traveling at the speed of light. We are currently getting a tenth of that speed, so, for now, we are not there yet, whether we can see all those stars or not.