Astrophysics

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

Survey Observatory · Competed · PI-led · Launched on April 18, 2018 · Extended Mission · LCC: $287M/$387M (2025 $)Life-cycle cost: NASA’s reported cost to build, launch, and operate a mission through its prime mission, plus documented partner contributions, in 2025 dollars. Extended missions are not included. Methods · Wikipedia

Scope Active Mission WindowActivePapers published from the first full month after science operations begin through two years after the mission ends. Citations are counted through the third calendar year after each paper appears. For TESS, papers published August 1, 2018 to January 1, 2024. Methods LifetimeLifetimeEvery tracked publication to date, with every citation to date. For TESS, papers published from 2018 to November 3, 2026. Methods
Tracked publicationsTracked publications: peer-reviewed papers we found that name the mission or its instruments in their titles, abstracts, or keywords. Papers that used the data without naming it are missed. Methods3,618
CitationsCitations: every citation these publications have drawn to date. Older missions have had longer to collect them. Methods67,350
Citation indices
h-indexh-index: the largest h such that h papers have at least h citations each. It only grows with time, so older missions score higher. Methods91
g-indexg-index: the largest g for which the g most-cited papers together hold at least g² citations. Like the h-index, but it lets the most-cited papers count for more. Methods144
m-indexm-index: a mission’s h-index divided by the years since its first peer-reviewed paper. It falls every 1 January even when nothing else changes; the figure shown is as of November 3, 2026. It also discounts the long operating life that larger missions paid for. Methods10.1
toritori (total research impact, from SciX): for every paper citing one of the mission’s papers, 1 divided by the citing paper’s reference count times the cited paper’s author count, summed, with self-citations removed. It favors citations from papers with short reference lists and from outside the mission’s own authors. Computed over the tracked citation graph, which can be slightly incomplete. Always over every tracked publication to date, whichever scope is chosen. Methods221
riqriq (research impact quotient): 1,000 times the square root of tori, divided by the years since the mission’s first paper. A rate, not a total, so it does not keep growing with age the way the h-index and tori do. Like tori, always over every tracked publication to date. Methods1,487

Publications and citations by year (lifetime)

Publications per yearCumulative citations

Institutional contributions (lifetime)The institutions SciX lists for each paper’s authors, as printed on the paper, located through the Research Organization Registry. A square counts a paper once, however many of its authors worked there. Methods

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Tracked publications over the lifetime (3,618)

All publications CSV · JSON

  1. The Revised TESS Input Catalog and Candidate Target List

    Stassun, Keivan G., 2019, AJ

    1,190 lifetime citations

  2. The TESS Input Catalog and Candidate Target List

    Stassun, Keivan G., 2018, AJ

    748 lifetime citations

  3. The GALAH+ survey: Third data release

    Buder, Sven, 2021, MNRAS

    701 lifetime citations

  4. A Framework for Prioritizing the TESS Planetary Candidates Most Amenable to Atmospheric Characterization

    Kempton, Eliza M.-R., 2018, PASP

    616 lifetime citations

  5. The TESS Objects of Interest Catalog from the TESS Prime Mission

    Guerrero, Natalia M., 2021, ApJS

    460 lifetime citations

  6. Stellar Flares from the First TESS Data Release: Exploring a New Sample of M Dwarfs

    Günther, Maximilian N., 2020, AJ

    396 lifetime citations

  7. The Eighteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys: Targeting and First Spectra from SDSS-V

    Almeida, Andrés, 2023, ApJS

    371 lifetime citations

  8. Angular Momentum Transport in Stellar Interiors

    Aerts, Conny, 2019, ARA&A

    332 lifetime citations

  9. Optimized transit detection algorithm to search for periodic transits of small planets

    Hippke, Michael, 2019, A&A

    285 lifetime citations

  10. A Revised Exoplanet Yield from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

    Barclay, Thomas, 2018, ApJS

    280 lifetime citations

  11. Planetary nebulae seen with TESS: Discovery of new binary central star candidates from Cycle 1

    Aller, A., 2020, A&A

    273 lifetime citations

  12. Wōtan: Comprehensive Time-series Detrending in Python

    Hippke, Michael, 2019, AJ

    269 lifetime citations

  13. eleanor: An Open-source Tool for Extracting Light Curves from the TESS Full-frame Images

    Feinstein, Adina D., 2019, PASP

    266 lifetime citations

  14. SOAR TESS Survey. I. Sculpting of TESS Planetary Systems by Stellar Companions

    Ziegler, Carl, 2020, AJ

    265 lifetime citations

  15. TESS Eclipsing Binary Stars. I. Short-cadence Observations of 4584 Eclipsing Binaries in Sectors 1-26

    Prša, Andrej, 2022, ApJS

    244 lifetime citations

  16. Vetting of 384 TESS Objects of Interest with TRICERATOPS and Statistical Validation of 12 Planet Candidates

    Giacalone, Steven, 2021, AJ

    202 lifetime citations

  17. Evolution of the Radius Valley around Low-mass Stars from Kepler and K2

    Cloutier, Ryan, 2020, AJ

    191 lifetime citations

  18. The Hubble Space Telescope PanCET Program: Exospheric Mg II and Fe II in the Near-ultraviolet Transmission Spectrum of WASP-121b Using Jitter Decorrelation

    Sing, David K., 2019, AJ

    190 lifetime citations

  19. CARMENES input catalogue of M dwarfs. V. Luminosities, colours, and spectral energy distributions

    Cifuentes, C., 2020, A&A

    186 lifetime citations

  20. TESS Discovery of a Transiting Super-Earth in the pi Mensae System

    Huang, Chelsea X., 2018, ApJ

    185 lifetime citations

How we found these papers

We searched NASA’s Science Explorer (SciX) for peer-reviewed articles naming TESS in the title, abstract or keywords; standard filters drop articles that are not peer-reviewed and magazine pieces.

((=abs:"Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite" OR (abs:TESS AND abs:(mission OR satellite OR spacecraft OR catalog OR exoplanet OR planet OR star OR stellar OR photometry OR photometric OR asteroseismology OR transit OR pulsation OR binary OR supernova OR galaxy OR asteroid OR comet OR Jupiter)) OR facility:TESS)) AND property:refereed AND doctype:article AND pubdate:[2018-08 TO 2040-01] AND NOT bibstem:("A&R" OR "ACPD" OR "AIASJ" OR "AMTD" OR "AeAm" OR "AirSp" OR "AsNow" OR "AsUAI" OR "AvWST" OR "BGD" OR "C&E" OR "C&T" OR "CAPJ" OR "CliPD" OR "E&S" OR "ENews" OR "ESDD" OR "ESSDD" OR "ESuDD" OR "GID" OR "GMDD" OR "GeCAS" OR "HESSD" OR "IrAJ" OR "JCos" OR "JRASC" OR "LAstr" OR "MNSSA" OR "Met" OR "NHESD" OR "NPGD" OR "NewSc" OR "OcScD" OR "Orion" OR "PhT" OR "PhTea" OR "PhuZ" OR "PhyOJ" OR "PhyW" OR "PlR" OR "SOILD" OR "SciAm" OR "SpFl" OR "TCD" OR "ZemVs")

Open in SciX

Removed after review (8)

  1. Demonstration of Athena X-IFU Compatible 40-Row Time-Division-Multiplexed Readout Detector readout for Athena; "TES" means transition-edge sensor, not the TESS mission. Decision 🤖
  2. Observation of nontrivial Zak phase induced topological states in glow discharge plasma Plasma photonics; "TESs" means topological edge states, not the TESS mission. Decision 🤖
  3. Benchmark forward gravity schemes: the gravity field of a realistic lithosphere model WINTERC-G Gravity modelling; "TESS" is a tesseroid integration code, not the mission. Decision 🤖
  4. High-order harmonic generation in uniformly distributed topological edge states Optics paper; "TESs" means topological edge states, not the TESS mission. Decision 🤖
  5. MuSCAT2: four-color simultaneous camera for the 1.52-m Telescopio Carlos Sánchez Instrument description of the ground-based MuSCAT2 camera; reports no TESS results. Decision 🤖
  6. Absolute Radiometric Calibration of TESS-W and SQM Night Sky Brightness Sensors Calibration of the ground-based TESS-W sky-brightness sensor, not the TESS mission. Decision 🤖
  7. TESS: The Little Satellite with a Big Job Magazine feature about the mission; not a research paper. Decision 🤖
  8. 2022MNRAS.513.2719V Stellar-parameter fitting software; TESS is not named in the title or abstract. Decision 🤖