NASA also predicts that the satellite could find more than 50 planets the size of Earth and up to 500 planets less than twice the size of Earth.
NASA has a new mission, aims to advance in the search for extraterrestrial life by exploring the nearby sky to find planets similar to the earth.
The new TESS research satellite is expected to reveal about 20,000 planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets, NASA said.
The Transiting Exoplanet research satellite, or TESS, is scheduled to take off at 6:32 pm local time (2232 GMT) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from a launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
At a total cost of $ 337 million, the space appliance that is the size of a washing machine is designed to look for signs of periodic attenuation of light in the closest and brightest stars.
These signals, known as "transits", can mean that there are planets in orbit around them.
Tess is a machine to search for the best planets that deserve to be studied more thoroughly, "says Ignasi Ribas, director of the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) and specialist in exoplanets who works closely with the Tess mission team.
Their discoveries will be studied in depth by terrestrial and space telescopes in search of signs of habitability, such as rocky terrain, similar in size to the Earth and a distance from the sun that allows a temperature compatible with liquid water.
"TESS is equipped with four very sensitive cameras that will be able to monitor virtually the entire sky," said George Ricker, TESS's principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "That's about 20 times more than what the Kepler mission was able to detect."
"It was designed to observe 150,000 stars in a fairly wide field of view without blinking, for four years," he told reporters on the eve of the launch. "One of the many amazing things that Kepler told us is that planets are everywhere and there are all kinds of planets."
Stephen Hawking has said that humanity will have to leave Earth in the next 100 years, but where will the inhabitants of that generation go? It is very difficult to answer that question, but at least the scientists are doing everything in their power to respond to this question as soon as possible.
Today NASA has made an important announcement, announcing that, with the help of the Kepler telescope, they have discovered 10 new planets similar to ours. A few months ago a new solar system with four planets was discovered, but the wonderful thing about this occasion is that these new worlds could harbor life.
The Universe still has many surprises in its vastness
These are major words, of course, but from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) they say that these new planets have similar characteristics to the Earth, which opens the door to two things: the first is the search for life outside of our world and the second, the possibility of taking life to other planets.
According to the NASA report, the fundamental factor in the importance of this discovery is that the planets are at a distance from their sun, which means they are not as hot or cold, a characteristic that could theoretically be allow the existence of water and, therefore, life.