  The proposed Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will survey the
entire sky to locate the nearest and brightest transiting extrasolar planets
with orbital periods up to about 36 days. Here we estimate the number and kind
of astrophysical false positives that TESS will report, along with the number
of extrasolar planets. These estimates are then used to size the ground-based
follow-up observing efforts needed to confirm and characterize the planets. We
estimate that the needed observing resources will be about 1400
telescope-nights of imaging with 0.5m to 1m-class telescopes, 300
telescope-nights with 1m to 2m-class telescopes for the classification of the
host stars and for radial velocity measurements with roughly 1 km/s precision,
and 380 telescope-nights with 2m to 4m-class telescopes for radial velocity
studies with precision of a few m/s. Follow-up spectroscopy of the smallest
planets discovered by TESS at the best possible velocity precision will be
limited by the number of telescope nights available on 4m to 10m class
telescopes with instruments such as HARPS and HIRES, but the pay-off of such
efforts will be the determination of masses for Super Earths with sufficient
accuracy to distinguish rocky desert planets from water worlds.
