EPOXI Mission News Options

[stevesliva]

Looks like the Deep Impact list has been revived. Posting here for others to get back on board:

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EPOXI E-News #1 May 2008
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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/

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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

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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

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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

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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

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at: http://epoxi.umd.edu/6outreach/newsletter.shtml

[Paolo]

After more than six months, the EPOXI mission site has some new updates. Nothing particularly interesting anyway

As the EPOCh team moves from processing data to writing papers about their results, the DIXI team is ramping up its activities in preparation for the encounter with comet Hartley 2 on November 4.

The majority of the data from EPOCh have been made public both at the Small Bodies Node of NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS-SBN) and at the Multi-Mission Archive at Space Telescope (MAST). A few datasets taken in 2009 and some derived data (such as the final light curves of transiting planets) still remain to be delivered.

There were two significant activities for DIXI in February. On February 16 we carried out the first of several cruise calibrations that are planned. The others will be in the summer, a few weeks prior to encounter, and a few weeks after encounter. These data ensure that we understand the operation of the instruments and can readily provide calibrated data after the encounter. The second significant activity in February was a face-to-face meeting of the science team with key members of the operations team to lay out the detailed sequence of observations to be made during the encounter (much like the Sequence Symphony from Deep Impact). These observations will include observations on approach starting 60 days prior to closest approach and observations on departure for 21 days. The details of these plans must be decided well in advance because it is necessary to test them extensively on simulators in order to be sure that everything operates as planned. Deep space flyby encounters such as this one do not allow any opportunity to redo any observations if something goes wrong and last minute changes are very risky. Thus these encounters are dealt with much more rigorously than are observations, e.g., with telescopes in orbit around Earth. For those observatories, it is essential to ensure the safety of the spacecraft and instruments but if the observation fails it can be repeated. We have no chance to repeat the observations. We will continue to change some details to the observing sequence over the next few months but the basic approach is completely determined at this time.