DOCSLIB.ORG

Concept Design of a New Space Telescope with Deployable Composite Booms

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Concept Design of a New Space Telescope with Deployable Composite Booms Concept design of a new space telescope with deployable composite booms Student project Course: “Strutture per veicoli spaziali” Politecnico di Torino A.A. 2020/2021 AUTHORS Team #1 (Chapters 1, 8) Ainardi Alessandro Alleruzzo Gianluca Barca Emanuele Bona Davide Cisternino Luigi Delpiano Davide De Stefano Matteo De Trane Giorgio Filippi Matteo Forte Piermatteo Guidi Manuel La Bella Emanuela Maffucci Marco Maldera Federico Martín Velazquez Antonio Mazza Cesare Mugoni Chiara Paschero Matteo Pennisi Andrea Santoro Alessandro Scalise Antonio Scancella Lorenzo Sibilla Mario Sica Andrea Siena Andrea Tagliani Gianluca Tarditi Simone Team #2 (Chapters 2, 7 and Appendices) Barberis Beniamino Biddau Luca Bronca Pietro Bruno Michele Cisaria Pietro Ciuffreda Samuele Favia Alessandro Friolotto Vittorio Iapichello Andrea Mai Cosimo Luigi Malagni Ludovica Manganiello Alessandro Marampon Davide Meloni Francesco Moreno Toledo Sonsoles Parrinello Domenico Peluso Alessandro Pipolo Serena Pistone Vittorio Revilla Veleda Javier Russo Emanuele Speziale Alessia Stella Giovanni Ungaro Francesco Viola Pasquale Vottero Davide Team #3 (Chapters 3, 6) Amore Daniele Amorosino Simone Antetomaso Valentina Barletta Stefano Bosi Rossella Breda Alessandro Carlucci Alessio Coco Stefano Cossu Antonio D'Agostino Simona Di Donna Arsenio Maria Dinolfo Giuseppe Fabro Davide Felli Ivan Florea Alexandru Folcarelli Lorenzo Gedda Giacomo Grasso Davide Grimaldi Giovanni Gutierrez Gabriel Jose Iannotta Domenico Andrea Lezzoche Domenico Morello Angelo Luca Musacchio Andrea Urso Elisabetta Vinella Emanuele Team #4 (Chapters 4, 5) Martina Cappa Enrico Edoardo Zini Enrico Rutigliano Serena Campioli Donato Russo Giorgio Chiofalo Andrea Pandolfo Adriano Palumbieri Simone Antonino Valeria Dessanti Federica Cardinale Ciccotti Francesco Lucia Rosa Tarda Ludovico Pernazza Daniele Greco Mariano Oliva Michele Pepe Francesco Manconi Rebecca Masia Giovan Battista Alogna Francesco Laudadio Tommaso Zanatta Vincenzo Alberto di Michele Christian Di Sannio Giuseppe Azzarelli SUPERVISORS Prof. A. Pagani Prof. E. Carrera Prof. M. Filippi Dr. A.R. Sanchez-Majano TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 State of the art of telescopes with tape spring-based secondary mirrors and active correction capabilities .......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Space Telescopes .................................................................................................................... 1 1.1.1 Space Telescope’s Traditional Configuration ................................................................... 1 1.1.2 Advantages and Disadvantages of Space Telescopes ...................................................... 2 1.1.3 Missions ........................................................................................................................... 3 1.1.4 Active Space Telescopes .................................................................................................. 5 1.2 Deployable Telescopes............................................................................................................ 8 1.2.1 Tape Spring Hexapod for Deployable Telescope Dynamics ............................................. 9 1.2.2 Halca .............................................................................................................................. 10 1.2.3 DISCIT ............................................................................................................................ 12 1.2.4 Low cost Deployable Telescope for Small Satellite ........................................................ 13 1.2.5 FalconSAT-7 ................................................................................................................... 13 1.2.6 Collapsible Space Telescope for Nanosatellites ............................................................. 14 1.3 Active Control System for Telescope Mirror ......................................................................... 15 1.3.1 Active optics .................................................................................................................. 15 1.3.2 VST – Solutions for the positioning of the secondary mirror ......................................... 16 1.3.3 W.M. Keck Telescopes – Segmented primary mirror active control system ................. 19 1.3.4 SOFIA Telescope – Extremely compact secondary mirror unit ...................................... 21 1.3.5 The Deployable Telescope PistonCam ........................................................................... 24 1.3.6 ATLAST – Hybrid Sensor Active Control (HSAC) Architecture ........................................ 26 1.3.7 Adaptive optics .............................................................................................................. 30 1.3.8 MMT – Unconventional secondary mirror used as corrector for the adaptive optics system 32 1.4 Passive Control System – Pointing ........................................................................................ 34 1.4.1 Gravity Gradient ............................................................................................................ 34 1.4.2 Magnetic Stabilization ................................................................................................... 35 1.4.3 Spin Stabilization ........................................................................................................... 36 1.5 Passive Deployment of Space Telescopes ............................................................................ 37 1.5.1 Spring Hinge .................................................................................................................. 37 1.5.2 Shape Memory Alloys .................................................................................................... 38 1.6 Future trends ........................................................................................................................ 38 1.6.1 James Webb Space Telescope ....................................................................................... 39 1.6.2 LUVOIR .......................................................................................................................... 40 i 1.6.3 HabEx ............................................................................................................................ 41 1.6.4 Lynx X-Ray Observatory ................................................................................................. 41 1.6.5 Origins Space Telescope ................................................................................................ 42 1.6.6 WFIRST .......................................................................................................................... 43 2 Booms: Materials and Configurations ........................................................................................... 45 2.1 Woven materials ................................................................................................................... 45 2.2 Fabrication procedures ......................................................................................................... 46 2.2.1 Resin impregnation ....................................................................................................... 46 2.2.2 Lay-up ............................................................................................................................ 47 2.2.3 Vacuum Stage ................................................................................................................ 47 2.2.4 Autoclave curing ............................................................................................................ 47 2.2.5 Hinge fabrication ........................................................................................................... 48 2.3 Common Materials for Deployable Structures ..................................................................... 48 2.3.1 Materials models and stability....................................................................................... 48 2.3.2 Flexible Composite Tape Springs (FCTS) ........................................................................ 50 2.3.3 Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) ...................................................................... 50 2.3.4 Large Strain Composite Materials ................................................................................. 52 2.3.5 Future Large Strain Materials ........................................................................................ 54 2.3.6 Deployment Repeatability Testing of Composite Tape Springs for Space Optics Applications ................................................................................................................................... 54 2.3.7 EMC material s .............................................................................................................. 55 2.3.8 Micro-Structural model ................................................................................................. 56 2.4 Boom Configurations ............................................................................................................ 57 2.4.1 Tape springs .................................................................................................................. 58 2.4.2 Storable Extendible Tubular Member (STEM) booms ................................................... 60 2.4.3 Bi-STEM ........................................................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • IVS NICT-TDC News No.39
    ISSN 1882-3432 CONTENTS Proceedings of the 18th NICT TDC Symposium (Kashima, October 1, 2020) KNIFE, Kashima Nobeyama InterFErometer . 3 Makoto Miyoshi Space-Time Measurements Research Inspired by Kashima VLBI Group . 8 Mizuhiko Hosokawa ALMA High Frequency Long Baseline Phase Correction Using Band-to-band ..... 11 (B2B) Phase Referencing Yoshiharu Asaki and Luke T. Maud Development of a 6.5-22.5 GHz Very Wide Band Feed Antenna Using a New ..... 15 Quadruple-Ridged Antenna for the Traditional Radio Telescopes Yutaka Hasegawa*, Yasumasa Yamasaki, Hideo Ogawa, Taiki Kawakami, Yoshi- nori Yonekura, Kimihiro Kimura, Takuya Akahori, Masayuki Ishino, Yuki Kawa- hara Development of Wideband Antenna . 18 Hideki Ujihara Performance Survey of Superconductor Filter Introduced in Wideband Re- ..... 20 ceiver for VGOS of the Ishioka VLBI Station Tomokazu Nakakuki, Haruka Ueshiba, Saho Matsumoto, Yu Takagi, Kyonosuke Hayashi, Toru Yutsudo, Katsuhiro Mori, Tomokazu Kobayashi, and Mamoru Sekido New Calibration Method for a Radiometer Without Using Liquid Nitrogen ..... 23 Cooled Absorber Noriyuki Kawaguchi, Yuichi Chikahiro, Kenichi Harada, and Kensuke Ozeki Comparison of Atmospheric Delay Models (NMF, VMF1, and VMF3) in ..... 27 VLBI analysis Mamoru Sekido and Monia Negusini HINOTORI Status Report . 31 Hiroshi Imai On-the-Fly Interferometer Experiment with the Yamaguchi Interferometer . 34 Kenta Fujisawa, Kotaro Niinuma, Masanori Akimoto, and Hideyuki Kobayashi Superconducting Wide-band BRF for Geodetic VLBI Observation with ..... 36 VGOS Radio Telescope
    [Show full text]
  • AATSR Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
    AATSR Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Author : IDEAS+ AATSR QC Team (Telespazio VEGA UK) IDEAS+-VEG-OQC-REP-2117 Issue 3 14 December 2016 AATSR Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Issue 3 AMENDMENT RECORD SHEET The Amendment Record Sheet below records the history and issue status of this document. ISSUE DATE REASON 1 20 Dec 2005 Initial Issue (as AEP_REP_001) 2 02 Oct 2013 Updated with new questions and information (issued as IDEAS- VEG-OQC-REP-0955) 3 14 Dec 2016 General updates, major edits to Q37., new questions: Q17., Q25., Q26., Q28., Q32., Q38., Q39., Q48. Now issued as IDEAS+-VEG-OQC-REP-2117 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 5 1.1 The Third AATSR Reprocessing Dataset (IPF 6.05) ............................................................ 5 1.2 References ............................................................................................................................ 6 2. GENERAL QUESTIONS ........................................................................................................... 7 Q1. What does AATSR stand for? ........................................................................................ 7 Q2. What is AATSR and what does it do? ............................................................................ 7 Q3. What is Envisat? ............................................................................................................. 7 Q4. What orbit does Envisat use? ........................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Constructing a Galactic Coordinate System Based on Near-Infrared and Radio Catalogs
    A&A 536, A102 (2011) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201116947 & c ESO 2011 Astrophysics Constructing a Galactic coordinate system based on near-infrared and radio catalogs J.-C. Liu1,2,Z.Zhu1,2, and B. Hu3,4 1 Department of astronomy, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, PR China e-mail: [jcliu;zhuzi]@nju.edu.cn 2 key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics (Nanjing University), Ministry of Education, Nanjing 210093, PR China 3 Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, PR China 4 Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, PR China e-mail: [email protected] Received 24 March 2011 / Accepted 13 October 2011 ABSTRACT Context. The definition of the Galactic coordinate system was announced by the IAU Sub-Commission 33b on behalf of the IAU in 1958. An unrigorous transformation was adopted by the Hipparcos group to transform the Galactic coordinate system from the FK4-based B1950.0 system to the FK5-based J2000.0 system or to the International Celestial Reference System (ICRS). For more than 50 years, the definition of the Galactic coordinate system has remained unchanged from this IAU1958 version. On the basis of deep and all-sky catalogs, the position of the Galactic plane can be revised and updated definitions of the Galactic coordinate systems can be proposed. Aims. We re-determine the position of the Galactic plane based on modern large catalogs, such as the Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) and the SPECFIND v2.0. This paper also aims to propose a possible definition of the optimal Galactic coordinate system by adopting the ICRS position of the Sgr A* at the Galactic center.
    [Show full text]
  • The Detectability and Constraints of Biosignature Gasses in the Near & Mid-Infrared from Transit Transmission Spectroscopy B
    The Detectability and Constraints of Biosignature Gasses in the Near & Mid-Infrared from Transit Transmission Spectroscopy by Luke Tremblay A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science Approved November 2019 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Michael Line, Chair Evgenya Schkolnik Sara Walker ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY December 2019 ABSTRACT The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST ) is expected to revolutionize the cur- rent understanding of Jovian worlds over the coming decade. However, as the field pushes towards characterizing cooler, smaller, \terrestrial-like" planets, dedicated next-generation facilities will be required to tease out the small spectral signatures indicative of biological activity. Here, the feasibility of determining atmospheric prop- erties, from near to mid-infrared transmission spectra, of transiting temperate ter- restrial M-dwarf companions, has been evaluated. Specifically, atmospheric retrievals were utilized to explore the trade space between spectral resolution, wavelength cover- age, and signal-to-noise on the ability to both detect molecular species and constrain their abundances. Increasing spectral resolution beyond R=100 for near-infrared wavelengths, shorter than 5µm, proves to reduce the degeneracy between spectral features of different molecules and thus greatly benefits the abundance constraints. However, this benefit is greatly diminished beyond 5µm as any overlap between broad features in the mid-infrared does not deconvolve with higher resolutions. Additionally, the inclusion of features beyond 11µm did not meaningfully improve the detection sig- nificance nor abundance constraints results. The findings of this study indicate that an instrument with continuous wavelength coverage from approximately 2-11µm and with a resolution of R'50-300, would be capable of detecting H2O, CO2, CH4,O3, and N2O in the atmosphere of an Earth-analog transiting an M-dwarf (magK =8.0) within 50 transits, and obtain better than an order-of-magnitude constraint on each of their abundances.
    [Show full text]
  • Cloud Cci ATSR-2 and AATSR Dataset Version 3: a 17-Year Climatology of Global Cloud and Radiation Properties Caroline A
    Discussions https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2019-217 Earth System Preprint. Discussion started: 11 December 2019 Science c Author(s) 2019. CC BY 4.0 License. Open Access Open Data Cloud_cci ATSR-2 and AATSR dataset version 3: a 17-year climatology of global cloud and radiation properties Caroline A. Poulsen1, Gregory R. McGarragh2, Gareth E. Thomas3,6, Martin Stengel4, Matthew W. Christensen5, Adam C. Povey7, Simon R. Proud5,6, Elisa Carboni3,6, Rainer Hollmann4, and Roy G. Grainger7 1Monash University, Melbourne, Australia 2Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Clarendon Laboratory, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK Now at Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, Colorado State University 3Science Technology Facility Council, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell, Oxfordshire, UK 4Deutscher Wetterdienst, Frankfurter Str. 135, 63067, Offenbach, Germany 5Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Clarendon Laboratory, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK 6National Centre for Earth Observation, Reading RG6 6BB, UK 7National Centre for Earth Observation, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, U.K. Correspondence: Caroline Poulsen ([email protected]) Abstract. We present version 3 (V3) of the Cloud_cci ATSR-2/AATSR dataset. The dataset was created for the European Space Agency (ESA) Cloud_cci (Climate Change Initiative) program. The cloud properties were retrieved from the second Along- Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR-2) on board the second European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-2) spanning 1995-2003 and the Advanced ATSR (AATSR) on board Envisat, which spanned 2002-2012. The data comprises a comprehensive set 5 of cloud properties: cloud top height, temperature, pressure, spectral albedo, cloud effective emissivity, effective radius and optical thickness alongside derived liquid and ice water path.
    [Show full text]
  • Spatial Distribution of Galactic Globular Clusters: Distance Uncertainties and Dynamical Effects
    Juliana Crestani Ribeiro de Souza Spatial Distribution of Galactic Globular Clusters: Distance Uncertainties and Dynamical Effects Porto Alegre 2017 Juliana Crestani Ribeiro de Souza Spatial Distribution of Galactic Globular Clusters: Distance Uncertainties and Dynamical Effects Dissertação elaborada sob orientação do Prof. Dr. Eduardo Luis Damiani Bica, co- orientação do Prof. Dr. Charles José Bon- ato e apresentada ao Instituto de Física da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul em preenchimento do requisito par- cial para obtenção do título de Mestre em Física. Porto Alegre 2017 Acknowledgements To my parents, who supported me and made this possible, in a time and place where being in a university was just a distant dream. To my dearest friends Elisabeth, Robert, Augusto, and Natália - who so many times helped me go from "I give up" to "I’ll try once more". To my cats Kira, Fen, and Demi - who lazily join me in bed at the end of the day, and make everything worthwhile. "But, first of all, it will be necessary to explain what is our idea of a cluster of stars, and by what means we have obtained it. For an instance, I shall take the phenomenon which presents itself in many clusters: It is that of a number of lucid spots, of equal lustre, scattered over a circular space, in such a manner as to appear gradually more compressed towards the middle; and which compression, in the clusters to which I allude, is generally carried so far, as, by imperceptible degrees, to end in a luminous center, of a resolvable blaze of light." William Herschel, 1789 Abstract We provide a sample of 170 Galactic Globular Clusters (GCs) and analyse its spatial distribution properties.
    [Show full text]
  • The Large Scale Universe As a Quasi Quantum White Hole
    International Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Journal 3(1): 22-42, 2021; Article no.IAARJ.66092 The Large Scale Universe as a Quasi Quantum White Hole U. V. S. Seshavatharam1*, Eugene Terry Tatum2 and S. Lakshminarayana3 1Honorary Faculty, I-SERVE, Survey no-42, Hitech city, Hyderabad-84,Telangana, India. 2760 Campbell Ln. Ste 106 #161, Bowling Green, KY, USA. 3Department of Nuclear Physics, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam-03, AP, India. Authors’ contributions This work was carried out in collaboration among all authors. Author UVSS designed the study, performed the statistical analysis, wrote the protocol, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. Authors ETT and SL managed the analyses of the study. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Article Information Editor(s): (1) Dr. David Garrison, University of Houston-Clear Lake, USA. (2) Professor. Hadia Hassan Selim, National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics, Egypt. Reviewers: (1) Abhishek Kumar Singh, Magadh University, India. (2) Mohsen Lutephy, Azad Islamic university (IAU), Iran. (3) Sie Long Kek, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Malaysia. (4) N.V.Krishna Prasad, GITAM University, India. (5) Maryam Roushan, University of Mazandaran, Iran. Complete Peer review History: http://www.sdiarticle4.com/review-history/66092 Received 17 January 2021 Original Research Article Accepted 23 March 2021 Published 01 April 2021 ABSTRACT We emphasize the point that, standard model of cosmology is basically a model of classical general relativity and it seems inevitable to have a revision with reference to quantum model of cosmology. Utmost important point to be noted is that, ‘Spin’ is a basic property of quantum mechanics and ‘rotation’ is a very common experience.
    [Show full text]
  • FAME-C: Cloud Property Retrieval Using Synergistic AATSR and MERIS Observations
    Atmos. Meas. Tech., 7, 3873–3890, 2014 www.atmos-meas-tech.net/7/3873/2014/ doi:10.5194/amt-7-3873-2014 © Author(s) 2014. CC Attribution 3.0 License. FAME-C: cloud property retrieval using synergistic AATSR and MERIS observations C. K. Carbajal Henken, R. Lindstrot, R. Preusker, and J. Fischer Institute for Space Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin (FUB), Berlin, Germany Correspondence to: C. K. Carbajal Henken ([email protected]) Received: 29 April 2014 – Published in Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss.: 19 May 2014 Revised: 17 September 2014 – Accepted: 11 October 2014 – Published: 25 November 2014 Abstract. A newly developed daytime cloud property re- trievals. Biases are generally smallest for marine stratocu- trieval algorithm, FAME-C (Freie Universität Berlin AATSR mulus clouds: −0.28, 0.41 µm and −0.18 g m−2 for cloud MERIS Cloud), is presented. Synergistic observations from optical thickness, effective radius and cloud water path, re- the Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) spectively. This is also true for the root-mean-square devia- and the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS), tion. Furthermore, both cloud top height products are com- both mounted on the polar-orbiting Environmental Satellite pared to cloud top heights derived from ground-based cloud (Envisat), are used for cloud screening. For cloudy pixels radars located at several Atmospheric Radiation Measure- two main steps are carried out in a sequential form. First, ment (ARM) sites. FAME-C mostly shows an underestima- a cloud optical and microphysical property retrieval is per- tion of cloud top heights when compared to radar observa- formed using an AATSR near-infrared and visible channel.
    [Show full text]
  • Modeling and Interpretation of the Ultraviolet Spectral Energy Distributions of Primeval Galaxies
    Ecole´ Doctorale d'Astronomie et Astrophysique d'^Ile-de-France UNIVERSITE´ PARIS VI - PIERRE & MARIE CURIE DOCTORATE THESIS to obtain the title of Doctor of the University of Pierre & Marie Curie in Astrophysics Presented by Alba Vidal Garc´ıa Modeling and interpretation of the ultraviolet spectral energy distributions of primeval galaxies Thesis Advisor: St´ephane Charlot prepared at Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS (UMR 7095), Universit´ePierre & Marie Curie (Paris VI) with financial support from the European Research Council grant `ERC NEOGAL' Composition of the jury Reviewers: Alessandro Bressan - SISSA, Trieste, Italy Rosa Gonzalez´ Delgado - IAA (CSIC), Granada, Spain Advisor: St´ephane Charlot - IAP, Paris, France President: Patrick Boisse´ - IAP, Paris, France Examinators: Jeremy Blaizot - CRAL, Observatoire de Lyon, France Vianney Lebouteiller - CEA, Saclay, France Dedicatoria v Contents Abstract vii R´esum´e ix 1 Introduction 3 1.1 Historical context . .4 1.2 Early epochs of the Universe . .5 1.3 Galaxytypes ......................................6 1.4 Components of a Galaxy . .8 1.4.1 Classification of stars . .9 1.4.2 The ISM: components and phases . .9 1.4.3 Physical processes in the ISM . 12 1.5 Chemical content of a galaxy . 17 1.6 Galaxy spectral energy distributions . 17 1.7 Future observing facilities . 19 1.8 Outline ......................................... 20 2 Modeling spectral energy distributions of galaxies 23 2.1 Stellar emission . 24 2.1.1 Stellar population synthesis codes . 24 2.1.2 Evolutionary tracks . 25 2.1.3 IMF . 29 2.1.4 Stellar spectral libraries . 30 2.2 Absorption and emission in the ISM . 31 2.2.1 Photoionization code: CLOUDY .......................
    [Show full text]
  • Tiny ASTERIA Satellite Achieves a First for Cubesats 16 August 2018, by Lauren Hinkel and Mary Knapp
    Tiny ASTERIA satellite achieves a first for CubeSats 16 August 2018, by Lauren Hinkel And Mary Knapp The ASTERIA project is a collaboration between MIT and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, funded through JPL's Phaeton Program. The project started in 2010 as an undergraduate class project in 16.83/12.43 (Space Systems Engineering), involving a technology demonstration of astrophysical measurements using a Cubesat, with a primary goal of training early-career engineers. The ASTERIA mission—of which Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Sciences Sara Seager is the Principal Investigator—was designed to demonstrate key technologies, including very Members of the ASTERIA team prepare the petite stable pointing and thermal control for making satellite for its journey to space. Credit: NASA/JPL- extremely precise measurements of stellar Caltech brightness in a tiny satellite. Earlier this year, ASTERIA achieved pointing stability of 0.5 arcseconds and thermal stability of 0.01 degrees Celsius. These technologies are important for A miniature satellite called ASTERIA (Arcsecond precision photometry, i.e., the measurement of Space Telescope Enabling Research in stellar brightness over time. Astrophysics) has measured the transit of a previously-discovered super-Earth exoplanet, 55 Cancri e. This finding shows that miniature satellites, like ASTERIA, are capable of making of sensitive detections of exoplanets via the transit method. While observing 55 Cancri e, which is known to transit, ASTERIA measured a miniscule change in brightness, about 0.04 percent, when the super- Earth crossed in front of its star. This transit measurement is the first of its kind for CubeSats (the class of satellites to which ASTERIA belongs) which are about the size of a briefcase and hitch a ride to space as secondary payloads on rockets used for larger spacecraft.
    [Show full text]
  • Biosignatures Search in Habitable Planets
    galaxies Review Biosignatures Search in Habitable Planets Riccardo Claudi 1,* and Eleonora Alei 1,2 1 INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Padova, Vicolo Osservatorio, 5, 35122 Padova, Italy 2 Physics and Astronomy Department, Padova University, 35131 Padova, Italy * Correspondence: [email protected] Received: 2 August 2019; Accepted: 25 September 2019; Published: 29 September 2019 Abstract: The search for life has had a new enthusiastic restart in the last two decades thanks to the large number of new worlds discovered. The about 4100 exoplanets found so far, show a large diversity of planets, from hot giants to rocky planets orbiting small and cold stars. Most of them are very different from those of the Solar System and one of the striking case is that of the super-Earths, rocky planets with masses ranging between 1 and 10 M⊕ with dimensions up to twice those of Earth. In the right environment, these planets could be the cradle of alien life that could modify the chemical composition of their atmospheres. So, the search for life signatures requires as the first step the knowledge of planet atmospheres, the main objective of future exoplanetary space explorations. Indeed, the quest for the determination of the chemical composition of those planetary atmospheres rises also more general interest than that given by the mere directory of the atmospheric compounds. It opens out to the more general speculation on what such detection might tell us about the presence of life on those planets. As, for now, we have only one example of life in the universe, we are bound to study terrestrial organisms to assess possibilities of life on other planets and guide our search for possible extinct or extant life on other planetary bodies.
    [Show full text]
  • Highlights in Space 2010
    International Astronautical Federation Committee on Space Research International Institute of Space Law 94 bis, Avenue de Suffren c/o CNES 94 bis, Avenue de Suffren UNITED NATIONS 75015 Paris, France 2 place Maurice Quentin 75015 Paris, France Tel: +33 1 45 67 42 60 Fax: +33 1 42 73 21 20 Tel. + 33 1 44 76 75 10 E-mail: : [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Fax. + 33 1 44 76 74 37 URL: www.iislweb.com OFFICE FOR OUTER SPACE AFFAIRS URL: www.iafastro.com E-mail: [email protected] URL : http://cosparhq.cnes.fr Highlights in Space 2010 Prepared in cooperation with the International Astronautical Federation, the Committee on Space Research and the International Institute of Space Law The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs is responsible for promoting international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space and assisting developing countries in using space science and technology. United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs P. O. Box 500, 1400 Vienna, Austria Tel: (+43-1) 26060-4950 Fax: (+43-1) 26060-5830 E-mail: [email protected] URL: www.unoosa.org United Nations publication Printed in Austria USD 15 Sales No. E.11.I.3 ISBN 978-92-1-101236-1 ST/SPACE/57 *1180239* V.11-80239—January 2011—775 UNITED NATIONS OFFICE FOR OUTER SPACE AFFAIRS UNITED NATIONS OFFICE AT VIENNA Highlights in Space 2010 Prepared in cooperation with the International Astronautical Federation, the Committee on Space Research and the International Institute of Space Law Progress in space science, technology and applications, international cooperation and space law UNITED NATIONS New York, 2011 UniTEd NationS PUblication Sales no.
    [Show full text]