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TAUVEX: Status in 2011 3 Astrophysics and Space Science DOI 10.1007/sXXXXX-XXX-XXXX-X TAUVEX: status in 2011 Noah Brosch • Jayant Murthy c Springer-Verlag •••• Abstract 1 Introduction We present a short history of the TAUVEX instru- ment, conceived to provide multi-band wide-field imag- The Israel Space Agency (ISA) issued a call for pre- ing in the ultraviolet, emphasizing the lack of suffi- proposals in 1988 for “scientific experiments to be flown cient and aggressive support on the part of the differ- on an Israeli satellite”. The call was answered by ap- ent space agencies that dealt with this basic science proximately 50 pre-proposals ranging from space as- mission. First conceived in 1985 and selected by the tronomy experiments, to characterizing the behavior of Israel Space Agency in 1989 as its first priority pay- electronic devices in the space environment, to the be- load, TAUVEX is fast becoming one of the longest- havior of fishes in zero-g. All the pre-proposals were living space project of space astronomy. After being evaluated by an internal ISA panel and two were se- denied a launch on a national Israeli satellite, and then lected and funded to submit Phase A proposals. Among not flying on the Spectrum X-Gamma (SRG) interna- these, the one from Tel Aviv University proposed to or- tional observatory, it was manifested since 2003 as part bit two small telescopes to provide relatively wide-field of ISRO’s GSAT-4 Indian satellite to be launched in the imaging in the space-ultraviolet (UV) domain. late 2000s. However, two months before the launch, in The subsequent submission stage at the completion February 2010, it was dismounted from its agreed-upon of the Phase A, performed together with a commercial platform. This proved to be beneficial, since GSAT-4 contractor (El-Op Electro-Optical Industries now part and its launcher were lost on April 15 2010 due to the of the ELBIT Systems company), produced a detailed failure of the carrier rocket’s 3rd stage. TAUVEX is study of the mission. El-Op was selected as Prime Con- now stored in ISRO’s clean room in Bangalore with no tractor since it had a strong heritage of sophisticated firm indications when or on what platform it might be electro-optical payloads for ground, naval, and airborne launched. imaging while developing substantial infrastructure for space imaging payloads. In particular, it operated a arXiv:1102.1262v1 [astro-ph.IM] 7 Feb 2011 Keywords instrumentation: astronomy, space vehi- cles: instruments, ultraviolet: general thermal-vacuum chamber equipped with a collimator that allowed a payload to be end-to-end tested in vac- uum and at extreme temperatures. Noah Brosch The TAUVEX Phase A result was a design summa- The Wise Observatory and the Beverly and Raymond rized in Table 1, with three 20-cm co-aligned telescopes Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of mounted within a cylinder that could fit the inner space Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, of an OFEQ-class satellite. The field of view (FOV) of Israel each telescope was chosen to be approximately one de- Jayant Murthy gree. Erring on the conservative side, we decided to use Indian Institute of Astrophysics, II Block Koramangala, only space-proven techniques and components, and to Bangalore 560 034, India require the Prime Contractor to include fully-redundant systems in this first national astronomy experiment. For UV detectors we selected sealed photoelectric detec- tors with Caesium Telluride semi-transparent cathodes equipped with multi-channel plate (MCP) intensifiers 2 and wedge-and-strip anodes, as used in previous exper- However, with the loss at launch of one of the OFEQ iments (e.g., FAUST: Bowyer et al. 1993). At this time satellites, practical necessities dictated the use of the we decided to name the experiment TAUVEX, for Tel satellite and launcher to orbit a different payload. With Aviv University UV EXperiment. The science to be the disappearance of the satellite and launcher intended performed by TAUVEX, as proposed to ISA, was to for pure scientific research, ISA announced that it could survey a large fraction of the sky in the UV to depths only provide funding for the development of the scien- vastly superior to those achieved by the UV surveys in tific instrument and that the science team should look the 1970s. for a platform on which TAUVEX could be flown. The science goals of the TAUVEX mission were de- fined as providing galaxy imaging in a number of bands to allow studies of star formation processes, allowing 2 An alternative launch: SRG the detection and identification of AGNs by selections based on color indices, and collecting unique stellar With the help of international colleagues, the Spectrum photometry data for stellar populations and interstellar X-γ (SRG) spacecraft was identified as a possible car- extinction studies. These goals were discussed by e.g., rier platform for TAUVEX. SRG was designed as a large Brosch & Almoznino (2007), Joshi et al. (2007), Net- high-energy astrophysics platform, one of the three ma- zer (2007), Shastri (2007), and Maheswar et al. (2007). jor observatories in the Spectrum series, together with They were derived from the projected capabilities of Spectrum RadioAstron and Spectrum-UV. The space- TAUVEX given the properties listed by Brosch (1998) craft was to be provided by the Soviet Union and con- and subsequent modifications. Of special importance structed at the Lavotchkin Space Industries in Khimky for the study of galaxies in the nearby Universe and (near Moscow), with most of its scientific instruments of the stellar and interstellar matter of the Milky Way on-board to be supplied by different European coun- we mention the inclusion of two filters centered on the tries. Originally, SRG was to be launched by a Proton 2174Å feature; photometric measurements through a rocket into a highly elliptical, four-day Molnyia-type wide and a narrow band filter allow the measurement orbit. of the equivalent width of this feature. The largest instrument on-board SRG was the The TAUVEX Phase A report was submitted to the Danish-led SODART X-ray telescope with two 60-cm scrutiny of two evaluation committees: one technical, nested-cones concentrators for the ∼0.3-10 keV range composed of Israeli technology experts to evaluate its (Schnopper 1990). SODART was to provide X-ray feasibility, and the other scientific, composed of well- imaging over a ∼one degree FOV with arcmin angu- known international experts in the UV astronomy field lar resolution and excellent sensitivity, given its large- to evaluate its scientific contribution and expected im- throughput optics. SRG included also soft X-ray to pact. The second selected proposal, submitted by the extreme UV imagers from Switzerland, another X-ray Technion, Israel’s technological university, was evalu- imager from the UK, a hard X-ray imager from Italy, ated at the same time; it proposed orbiting a small etc. X-ray telescope. The inclusion of TAUVEX among the SRG instru- The two evaluations proceeded in parallel and the ments was intended to provide simultaneous UV infor- conclusion was that ISA selected TAUVEX as the pay- mation with which the X-ray observations could be cor- load with the highest priority to launch. At this point, related, much in the manner of XMM’s Optical/UV when the development, construction and launch of monitor. An additional task imposed on TAUVEX by TAUVEX were expected to follow smoothly, ISA found the mission leaders was to aid the SRG fine guidance that the national satellite and launcher on which it was system in stabilizing the telescopes’ LOS. This was to counting to mount TAUVEX became unavailable. The be done by providing fine guiding corrections to the reason, which became clear only in 2009, was that ISA SRG systems every two seconds; these corrections were originally planned to launch TAUVEX on the qualifi- derived from centroiding a relatively bright star in the cation model (QM) of one of the OFEQ-series satellite, TAUVEX FOV and measuring displacements from an the first three-axis-stabilized Israeli satellites used for initial position. Calculations showed that with the ex- imaging intelligence. The QM would have been refur- pected sensitivity TAUVEX could provide such stabi- bished and used to launch and operate TAUVEX which, lization signals all over the sky if it would have been as already described, was originally designed to fit the used with no filter, or with a very wide blue-cutoff filter inner volume of the satellite. dubbed “broad-band filter” (BBF). Since this “guiding” task was deemed to be vital for SRG, the satellite Prin- cipal Investigator required TAUVEX to be equipped TAUVEX: status in 2011 3 Table 1 TAUVEX details Property Description Numberoftelescopes 3 Aperture (individual telescope) 20-cm Optical design Ritchey-Chrétien Operatingspectralrange 120-320nm Filter wheels four-position Detector Wedge-and-strip (CsTe2; Peak QE≃10%); photon-counting Field of view 56 arcmin Electronicpixelsize 3arcsec Angular resolution 6-11 arcsec (wavelength dependent) Calculated sensitivity (SRG) ∼20 mag (monochromatic) in 1h integration Calculated sensitivity (GSAT-4) ∼19 mag (monochromatic) while scanning the NPC Note: NPC=North Polar Cap: 90◦ ≤ δ ≤ 80◦ with a BBF filter in every telescope of the three it car- els and of a thermal model (TM), identical in shape to ried, albeit its scientific value was not expected to be the flight model (FM) but equipped with many sensors significant. so that it could fully simulate the behavior of TAUVEX The configuration of three telescopes within a cylin- in space conditions. Prior to its delivery to Lavotchkin, der, conceived for an OFEQ launch, could not be the TAUVEX TM undertook a full space simulation maintained with TAUVEX mounted on top of SO- at the iABG facility in Germany, where a thermal- DART at the space end of SRG.
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