CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s Tess spacecraft has embarked on a quest to find new worlds around neighboring stars that could support life.

Tess rode a SpaceX Falcon rocket through the evening sky, aiming for an orbit stretching to the moon.

The satellite — the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or Tess — will scan almost the entire sky for at least two years, staring at the closest, brightest stars in an effort to find and identify any planets around them. Hundreds of thousands of stars will be scrutinized.