EPOXI Mission News |
EPOXI Mission News |
May 28 2008, 07:48 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1598 Joined: 14-October 05 From: Vermont Member No.: 530 |
Looks like the Deep Impact list has been revived. Posting here for others to get back on board:
********************************************************************** EPOXI E-News #1 May 2008 ********************************************************************** WELCOME BACK! Did you know that the Deep Impact Flyby Spacecraft has a new assignment? The EPOXI mission combines two exciting science investigations in an entirely new mission that re-uses the Deep Impact spacecraft. The Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization (EPOCh) investigation will observe stars that have known transiting giant planets. The Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI) of comets observes comet 103P/Hartley 2 during a close flyby in October 2010. The education and public outreach team decided to get back in touch with our Deep Impact friends and begin sending out newsletters again to keep you informed of these two exciting investigations! During the two years since our last newsletter for Deep Impact, the science team has stayed busy continuing to do more analysis on the data collected in July 2005. The science team also proposed and was awarded an extended mission teaming up with a group from Goddard Space Flight Center. EPOXI website: http://epoxi.umd.edu/ Mission Overview: http://epoxi.umd.edu/1mission/index.shtml Press Releases: http://epoxi.umd.edu/7press/index.shtml DI Results: http://deepimpact.umd.edu/results/ ********************************************************************** MISSION STATUS Dr. Deming, Principal Investigator (PI) for the EPOCh portion of the mission, sends us the latest mission status report in which he tells us about the current observing target GJ436. “This is an exciting time for EPOCh, as we search for an exo-Earth orbiting a stellar neighbor of our Sun!” reports Dr Deming. He also talks about the plans to observe a very special planet in late May and early June. Read his status report as well as past reports from other team members at http://epoxi.umd.edu/1mission/status.shtml ********************************************************************** EPOCh TARGETS The EPOCh component of the EPOXI mission will carefully study a small number of stars in order to learn more about planets that we know are orbiting those stars by watching the planets as they transit (cross in front of) the star. EPOCh will also search for clues to other planets that might be orbiting the same stars. Read more about the EPOCh science targets to find out which stars are being observed. http://epoxi.umd.edu/2science/targets.shtml ********************************************************************** PLANET QUEST Are we alone? For centuries, human beings have pondered this question. Medieval scholars speculated that other worlds must exist and that some would harbor other forms of life. In our time, advances in science and technology have brought us to the threshold of finding an answer to this timeless question. The recent discovery of numerous planets around stars other than the sun confirms that our solar system is not unique. Indeed, these "exoplanets" appear to be common in our galactic neighborhood. The EPOCh investigation is part of a larger family of missions studying extrasolar planets. Learn more at the Jet Propulsion Lab Planet Quest Web site. http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm ********************************************************************** OBSERVING CHALLENGE The transits that will be studied for EPOCh are extremely difficult to observe because the change in brightness is very small and requires high precision photometry that can be accomplished with instruments on the Deep Impact spacecraft. Observers on Earth can still take a look at the stars in the night time sky. The selected stars are also pretty dim because we don’t want them to saturate or over expose the spacecraft instruments but they are bright enough to be visible in amateur telescopes if the sky conditions are good and the skies are dark. Like people, stars have multiple identifiers. EPOCh’s first target was a star labeled as HAT-P-4 by the scientists observing it. They made their own list of target stars so that was their shorthand name. But HAT-P-4 has numerous other names which are more useful in identifying it in other databases. HAT-P-4 = SAO 64638 = TYC 2569-1599-1 is a magnitude 11, G-class star located in the constellation Boötes. Chart: http://epoxi.umd.edu/2science/challenge.shtml ********************************************************************** SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION Please forward this e-mail to others interested in NASA missions. New subscribers may join the EPOXI Mission e-news mailing list on our website at: http://epoxi.umd.edu/6outreach/newsletter.shtml |
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Mar 23 2009, 05:11 PM
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 14 Joined: 18-March 09 From: Pasadena, CA USA Member No.: 4677 |
Daniel, the SPICE kernel you have is slightly out of date. Your version was generated before TCM-14 without the TCM-14 burn. You want to be using spk_drm224_Burn-full.bin That's the latest and greatest o.d. solution. Where are you getting these by the way? Are they public?
I sent an e-mail to the webmaster for space.jpl.nasa.gov and asked him to add EPOXI. He hasn't gotten back to me, but I hope we'll get EPOXI in there. I talked to the P.I. about getting EPOCh images released to the public. They're thought is, "why should we release them is no one will want to look at them because they're ugly, fuzzy images, especially in .jpg format." The data should be published to the PDS next month and made public about a month after. So, images around May perhaps... don't hold your breath. Oh, and we're going to do another Earth observation of the North pole on Friday 3/27/09. It should give us some more pretty pictures ~Rich |
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Mar 24 2009, 12:35 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 340 Joined: 11-April 08 From: Sydney, Australia Member No.: 4093 |
Dear Rich,
Daniel, the SPICE kernel you have is slightly out of date. Your version was generated before TCM-14 without the TCM-14 burn. You want to be using spk_drm224_Burn-full.bin That's the latest and greatest o.d. solution. Thanks so much for the clarification. I will incorporate the file into the next data update. Where are you getting these by the way? Are they public? Yes the SPICE kernels are public and for most missions they can be found at http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/ EPOXI, still under the Deep Impact name, is listed under the Comet and Asteroid missions at http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/data_comet.html The Horizons system at http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons also runs on SPICE kernels but occasionally it is not updated. At the moment it seems to use CODE Trajectory Name Start UTC Stop UTC ----------------------------- -------------------- -------------------- [...] drm220_withTCM12-full 2008 APR 18 09:00:00 2008 DEC 09 00:00:00 (103P/Hartley 2 soln.: #49) drm223_with_tcms-full 2008 DEC 09 00:00:00 2012 JAN 31 00:00:00 epoxi_2008-2019.090217 2012 JAN 31 00:00:00 2019 JAN 01 00:00:00 I sent an e-mail to the webmaster for space.jpl.nasa.gov and asked him to add EPOXI. He hasn't gotten back to me, but I hope we'll get EPOXI in there. Thanks. If you wish to include timeline events, feel free to send them to me and I'll upload them in due course. Anything to create a grain of outreach for your mission :-) -------------------- |
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