SpaceX launches the alien planet-hunting TESS telescope today. Watch it live.

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On Monday, SpaceX is scheduled to launch NASA’s alien planet-hunting telescope TESS to orbit. 

TESS — short for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite — will search the sky to examine thousands of stars, sending vital information back to scientists on Earth to help them find planets that may be like our own. Such planets would be candidates for harboring life.

The NASA mission is expected to launch to orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 6:32 p.m. ET. You can watch the launch live in the window below. 

About 10 minutes after launch, SpaceX is expected to land the first stage of the rocket back on Earth on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. (You can watch that cool bit of high-flying rocket action in the window below as well.) Read more…

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