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SIM Newsletter
" F R I N G E S "
Space Interferometry Mission Newsletter
Number 48, June 4, 2009
CONTENTS
1. Astrometry meeting at AAS in Pasadena - June 8-11, 2009
2. SIM Lite and the Astro2010 Decadal Survey
3. New look for the SIM Lite website
4. SIM Lite programmatic news
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1. Astrometry meeting at AAS in Pasadena - June 8-11, 2009
The 2009 summer meeting of the AAS is next week. Be sure to attend the Meeting-in-a-Meeting "2010-2020: The Decade of Astrometry." There will be four sessions, each 90 min, on Tuesday and Wednesday (morning and afternoon). The meeting will celebrate the tremendous renaissance in astrometry in the last 20 years as a key technique in astronomy. Huge improvements in precision have transformed astrometry from limited, albeit fundamental, applications into a powerful tool that is used to study exoplanets, stellar populations, maser sources, neutron stars and black holes, galactic structure, dark matter, and quasar astrophysics. As well as ground-based instruments and surveys, the meeting will cover space missions, including Gaia, JMAPS, and of course, SIM Lite.
The agenda is available on the AAS website. See: http://aas.org/meetings/aas214/event_mim_astrometry.php. In addition to the 4 oral sessions (# 218, 229, 239, and 249), there will be an extended poster session (# 411). Posters will be displayed throughout the first 3 days of the conference. The meeting organizers are Stephen Unwin (JPL, chair), William van Altena (Yale U), Todd Henry (Georgia State), Shri Kulkarni (Caltech), and Dawn Gelino (NExScI).
Be sure to visit the SIM Lite booth in the Exhibit Hall. There, you can talk to SIM Lite scientists and pick up a copy of the recently published book: SIM Lite Astrometric Observatory, a comprehensive description of SIM Lite and its science objectives.
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2. SIM Lite and the Astro2010 Decadal Survey
The SIM Science Team, SIM Lite Project, and interested scientists have been actively participating in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey, now in full swing. The major opportunities for input to the Survey have been (1) the calls for science White Papers, and (2) Requests for Information (RFI) from missions. Copies of the 12 SIM-related white papers are on the NRC website, at http://sites.nationalacademies.org/bpa/BPA_050603, but are more conveniently located on the SIM Lite website at: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/SIM/astro2010DecadalSurvey/scienceWhitePapers/.
The SIM Lite RFI response may be found here: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/SIM/astro2010DecadalSurvey/simliterfiresponse/. Along with several other 'activities' SIM Lite has been asked to present to one of the Decadal Program Prioritization Panels (PPPs), the Electromagnetic Observations from Space Panel. This will be on Monday, June 8, 11am, with Shri Kulkarni, SIM Mission Scientist and Science Team Chair, presenting.
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3. New look for the SIM Lite website
We have a 'new look' for the SIM Lite website http://sim.jpl.nasa.gov. In fact, this is a significant redesign, resulting in a site that we hope is easier to navigate, and meets the needs of both the general visitor "For everyone", and those seeking more technical info "For astronomers". There is a lot of new material, and the site reflects not just the name change (see Newsletter #42 http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/SIM/projectNews/simNewsletter/) but also the new configuration of the instrument and its science capabilities. For the professional community, we aim to provide up-to-date information on the capabilities of the mission as well as an extensive bibliography, information about research opportunities, a library of presentations and multimedia and context in comparison to other astrophysics missions such as Gaia, Kepler and the James Webb Space Telescope.
And remember that you can read about SIM Lite in much more detail in the SIM Lite Astrometric Observatory Book that we published in February. It is available as a PDF from the website at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/SIM/keyPubPapers/simBook2009/ where you can also sign up for a bound hardcopy to be sent to you.
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4. SIM Lite programmatic news
The following is the FY2009 Midterm Self Assessment of the SIM Lite Project, written by Project Manager Jim Marr, in response to a request from NASA HQ. This has a programmatic flavor, but is a very informative snapshot of the state of the Project as of March 2009, and is reproduced here (almost) verbatim.
1) Management:
- One of the greatest challenges that the project has faced during the first half of this fiscal year was trying to retain staff in the face of budget uncertainty to accomplish the planned efforts. Some activities were slowed down, but a lot of good work was accomplished and all important commitments were met on schedule.
- Changed the name of "SIM Lite" to "SIM Lite Astrometric Observatory" to highlight the pointed "observatory" character of SIM Lite's science mission when compared to scanning astrometric survey missions such as Hipparcos and Gaia.
- A 250 page SIM Lite Astrometric Observatory book was published Jan 29, 2009 that updates the 1999 SIM book for the Astro2010 Decadal. The focus of the book is on science and technical readiness. The book was distributed to a large segment of the science community in an attempt to educate the community about SIM Lite and its potential contributions. This distribution also included members of the European Blue Dot community and the Gaia science team.
- A series of SIM Lite cost estimates were generated in support of the Astro2010 Decadal Survey and a SIM Lite Mission Architecture Review with NASA HQ. Estimates included: SIM Lite team grass roots; JPL Engineering Cost Estimating Office (Analogy, Price, SEER, PMCM & Team G); and a NASA HQ initiated ICE by the Aerospace Corp that also used a number of different cost estimating methodologies. A presentation of the results of these estimates was made to NASA Astrophysics Division on Jan 27, 2009.
- The old SIM PlanetQuest external web site has been retired and replaced with a new SIM Lite Astrometric Observatory web site [see item 2 in this Newsletter] in an attempt to make it easy for those supporting the Astro2010 Decadal to obtain accurate and current information about SIM Lite. This site went live in Dec 2008.
- A large number of papers, talks, posters were presented at conferences around the world in an attempt to educate the world science community about the capabilities of the SIM Lite Astrometric Observatory.
2) Science:
- Two SIM Science Team meetings were held (Nov 19-20; Mar 18-19) to help coordinate the team's response to the Astro2010 Decadal Survey.
- The Project provided a SIM Lite science capability update to NASA Astronomy and Physics Division on Dec 16th that showed that in spite of the technical reductions being made to SIM Lite relative to SIM PlanetQuest, the science performance of SIM Lite retains the ability to meet the Goal-level performance from the previous two Decadal surveys and remains competitive, with no competition in most science topic areas, in the coming decade or longer.
- The Project supported the Winter AAS meeting in Long Beach the first full week in Jan 2009 with the objective of educating the science community on the differences between the old SIM PlanetQuest and the new SIM Lite as well as the overall scientific capabilities the SIM Lite mission. The SIM booth was completely updated to reflect SIM Lite, with new posters, a new 1/20th scale stereo-lithographic model of SIM Lite, an exploded diagram of the SIM Lite instrument accompanied by representative hardware. An executive summary of the forthcoming SIM Lite book was available for distribution and a signup list was provided for the full book. Additionally, SIM Lite was presented at the Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP) special session and there were many talks and poster sessions on SIM Lite given during the meeting.
- The project conducted phase 2 of the double-blind planet finding capability study in accordance with the phase 2 white paper signed in Sep 2008. This phase looked at the 60 most likely SIM Lite target stars for the deep Earth-analog search. The results look every bit as good as the results from phase 1 of the study (where all stars were one-Sun at 10 pc). Completeness (number found divided by number that should have been found) for all classes of planets was greater than 90% and Reliability (planet reported as found was actually there) was greater than 97% for all classes of planets. Classes of planets included: habitable zone; terrestrial; and terrestrial habitable zone. Final results were reported to NASA Astrophysics Division on Apr 29.
- The 19 SIM Science Studies (see http://nexsci.caltech.edu/missions/SIMPQ/SIMSciStudies/accepted.shtml) awarded in FY08 continued through the first half of FY09 (results are due at the end of FY09).
- The Project arranged for a SIM-Gaia science workshop in London Nov 5-6, 2008 to explore synergies and complementarities between SIM and Gaia. A follow-up workshop is tentatively planned for later this year.
- A one day SIM Lite workshop with CNES and SIM Lite scientists was held in Paris, France on Feb 3 to discuss how SIM Lite could fit into European future planning. This was a productive meeting leading to an invitation for Mike Shao, SIM's Project Scientist, to present to the Blue Dot workshop March 27-29, 2009.
- Twelve science white papers were submitted by Feb 15, 2009 in response to the Astro2010 call. Multiple white papers were submitted to each of the five Science Frontier Panels, as expected given the breadth of SIM Lite's science contribution capabilities [see item 3 in this Newsletter].
3) Instrument:
- Guide-2 Telescope (G2T) testbed team demonstrated that the star tracking performance of the G2T under a simulated ACS perturbation (0.2 arcsec) reached 41 µas during 100 hrs continuous data run. This performance is better than the current goal-level performance objective of 50 µas.
- Construction of the brassboard Astrometric Beam combiner (ABC) continued during the first half of this FY. The Test Readiness Review for the ABC will occur in late Spring 2009.
- The Spectral Calibration Development Unit (SCDU) facility: Demonstrated a SIM Lite field independent systematic noise floor below 17 nano-arcseconds (nas) in a thermal environment (MAM tank in building 318 highbay) that is less stable than the predicted on-orbit thermal environment. This performance is considerably better than the 32 nas assumed for the SIM Lite ability to detect habitable zone Earth-analogs around nearby stars.
- Completed construction of and held test readiness reviews (TRRs) for:
- One brassboard camera head and its signal processing electronics;
- The brassboard Fine Steering Mirror (FSM);
- The brassboard Modulation Optical Mechanism (MOM) and brassboard Pathlength Optical Mechanism (POM), which are together referred to as the High Frequency Optics (HFO).
- The PZT actuator dynamic life test reached 2.9 times one-life of the most dynamic SIM Lite application (in the high frequency optics), and is continuing.
- The Siderostat ball screw actuator life test reached 1.5 times one-life and is continuing.
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Editor: Steve Unwin <stephen.c.unwin{at}jpl.nasa.gov>
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