[4] NGTS builds heavily on experience with SuperWASP, using more sensitive detectors, refined software, and larger optics, though having a much smaller field of view.
[1] In turn, larger instruments such as HARPS, ESPRESSO and VLT-SPHERE may follow-up on NGTS discoveries with a detailed characterization to measure the mass of a large number of targets using Doppler spectroscopy (wobble method) and make it possible to determine the exoplanet's density, and hence whether it is gaseous or rocky.
[6][7] Ground-based surveys for extrasolar planets such as WASP and the HATNet Project have discovered many large exoplanets, mainly Saturn- and Jupiter-sized gas giants.
Space-based missions such as CoRoT and the Kepler survey have extended the results to smaller objects, including rocky super-Earth- and Neptune-sized exoplanets.
[4] To achieve this goal, the designers of the NGTS instruments drew upon an extensive hardware and software heritage from the WASP project, in addition to developing many refinements in prototype systems operating on La Palma during 2009 and 2010, and at the Geneva Observatory from 2012 to 2014.
[6] NGTS employs an automated array of twelve 20-centimeter f/2.8 telescopes on independent equatorial mounts and operating at orange to near-infrared wavelengths (600–900 nm).
[4] Although located at Paranal Observatory, NGTS is not in fact operated by ESO, but by a consortium of seven academic institutions from Chile, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom:[3] This is a list of planets discovered by this survey.