Discovery Program 2006 and Missions Of Opportunity |
Discovery Program 2006 and Missions Of Opportunity |
Guest_AlexBlackwell_* |
Jan 3 2006, 10:19 PM
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#1
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Guests |
I'm not sure exactly which forum this fits in but NASA has just released the AO for Discovery Program 2006 and Missions of Opportunity. See the Discovery Program Acquisition Home Page for more details. Click on the "Discovery AO" link to download the PDF.
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Jan 5 2006, 01:17 AM
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#2
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Guests |
Dantzler made it clear that if it is at all in his power to do so, he will pick two full-fledged Discovery missions this time around (regardless of whether he adds any MOs as well). In fact, he went on at some length about the fact that Mikulski's move had ticked him off in part because, while he thought he could probably find ONE scientifically worthwhile Discovery mission below the $350 million limit, he thought it very unlikely that he'd be able to find two of them. (He also said that, if budget problems force him to, he'd be willing to stoop to picking that one $350 million mission simultaneously with a more expensive one.)
As for MOs, he hinted that more than one might be picked -- in fact, he said that there may be more than one simultaneous MO picked associated with the Deep Impact extended mission! He made a vague reference to the possibility of "interplanetary observations" for one such Deep Impact MO, along with a comet flyby for another. But I have some trouble seeing what kind of interplanetary observations they could make with DI that would be worth the trouble -- which makes me wonder whether he may really be thinking about flying DI past more than one additional target, CONTOUR-style. Given the need for as big a sampling of different comets and asteroids as we can practically get, it would seem the logical thing to do if it's possible. |
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Nov 3 2006, 04:42 AM
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#3
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 87 Joined: 19-June 05 Member No.: 415 |
As for MOs, he (Dantzler) hinted that more than one might be picked -- in fact, he said that there may be more than one simultaneous MO picked associated with the Deep Impact extended mission! He made a vague reference to the possibility of "interplanetary observations" for one such Deep Impact MO, along with a comet flyby for another. But I have some trouble seeing what kind of interplanetary observations they could make with DI that would be worth the trouble -- .. Well, now you know: EPOCh ! Exosolar Planet Observation & Characterization. Using the defocused 30cm telescope as a photometer and spectrophotometer for transits of very large exoplanets. and from nprev and Phil Stooke: ..what does DI have that Hubble doesn't? Are we just talking availability here, or does DI's HRC have better resolution for such a task?" The only thing Deep Impact can have that Hubble doesn't is time. It could stare at a transiting exoplanet for long periods, monitoring multiple eclipses - well, not stare presumably, but take lots of pics, or maybe do a deliberately blurred and offset image like Galileo with Comet SL9 - whereas Hubble time is far too valuable to deploy like that. Phil Generally correct. It can take long sequences of small images taken rapidly. In addition, the blur, while not originally intentional, would be a benfit here. It will spread the star light out so that the detector can use much longer exposures with much improved radiometry (Can Hubble be defocused significantly and was this done when they observed transits by HD 149026b?) The amount of blurring can be more important than the aperture for these measurements of bright stars. Plus Deep Impact was designed to take small images rapidly, which could be used to determine the time profile of the transits, which is important for determining size. It also has an imaging spectrometer that goes out to 4.8 microns. Not only is Hubble's time too valuable to stare for days or weeks, but it gets interrupted by orbiting so close to the Earth, which blocks much of the sky for up to half of each orbit. Note that DIXI (Deep Impact eXtended Investigation of comets), EPOCh, and the Stardust extended mission actually won only $250K for further studies. This surprised people. Weren't previous MoOs fully awarded at this point? |
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