Potential Science Missions Enabled by NASA's Planned Ares V

NASA s planned Ares V cargo vehicle with its 10 meter diameter fairing and ~60,000 kg payload mass to L2 offers the potential to launch entirely new classes of space science missions such as 8-meter monolithic aperture telescopes, 12-meter aperture x-ray telescopes, 16 to 24 meter segmented telescopes and highly capable outer planet missions. The paper will summarize the current Ares V baseline performance capabilities and review potential mission concepts enabled by these capabilities

Potential Astrophysics Science Missions Enabled by NASA's Planned Ares V

NASA s planned Ares V cargo vehicle with its 10 meter diameter fairing and ~60,000 kg payload mass to L2 offers the potential to launch entirely new classes of space science missions such as 8-meter monolithic aperture telescopes, 12- meter aperture x-ray telescopes, 16 to 24 meter segmented telescopes and highly capable outer planet missions. The paper will summarize the current Ares V baseline performance capabilities and review potential mission concepts enabled by these capabilities

Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST): A Technology Roadmap for the Next Decade

The Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST) is a set of mission concepts for the next generation of UVOIR space observatory with a primary aperture diameter in the 8-m to 16-m range that will allow us to perform some of the most challenging observations to answer some of our most compelling questions, including "Is there life elsewhere in the Galaxy?" We have identified two different telescope architectures, but with similar optical designs, that span the range in viable technologies. The architectures are a telescope with a monolithic primary mirror and two variations of a telescope with a large segmented primary mirror. This approach provides us with several pathways to realizing the mission, which will be narrowed to one as our technology development progresses. The concepts invoke heritage from HST and JWST design, but also take significant departures from these designs to minimize complexity, mass, or both. Our report provides details on the mission concepts, shows the extraordinary scientific progress they would enable, and describes the most important technology development items. These are the mirrors, the detectors, and the high-contrast imaging technologies, whether internal to the observatory, or using an external occulter. Experience with JWST has shown that determined competitors, motivated by the development contracts and flight opportunities of the new observatory, are capable of achieving huge advances in technical and operational performance while keeping construction costs on the same scale as prior great observatories.Comment: 22 pages, RFI submitted to Astro2010 Decadal Committe

Development of off-plane gratings for WHIMex and IXO

Future X-ray astronomical missions will need to address a number of important goals such as studying the dynamics of clusters of galaxies, determining how elements are created in the explosions of massive stars, and revealing most of the “normal” matter in the universe which is currently thought to be hidden in hot filaments of gas stretching between galaxies. In order to achieve these goals, spectrometers capable of high resolution and high throughput are necessary for the lowest X-ray energies, 0.3-1.0 keV. We present recent progress in the development of off-plane reflection grating technology for use on upcoming missions. Off-plane grating spectrometers consist of an array of gratings capable of reaching resolutions above 3000 (λ/Δλ). Concept designs have been made for the International X-ray Observatory X-ray Grating Spectrometer. More recently however, we have designed an Optics Module Assembly for WHIMex, an Explorer mission concept that incorporates a Wolter telescope, steering flats, and an array of gratings. This paper will discuss these designs and the application of off-plane arrays for the future

Off-plane x-ray grating spectrometer camera for IXO

The International X-ray Observatory (IXO) is a merger of the former ESA XEUS and NASA Constellation-X missions, with additional collaboration from JAXA, proposed for launch ~2020. IXO will address the leading astrophysical questions in the ‘hot universe’ through its breakthrough capabilities in X-ray spectroscopy. The mission covers the 0.1 to 40 keV energy range, complementing the capabilities of the next generation observatories, such as ALMA, LSST, JWST and 30 meter ground-based telescopes. An X-ray Grating Spectrometer is baselined to provide science in the energy range 0.3-1.0 keV at a spectral resolution of E/ΔE > 3,000 with an effective area greater than 1,000 cm2. This will require an array of soft X-ray enhanced CCDs operating at a modest frame rate to measure the diffracted light in both position and energy. Here we describe the baseline camera for the off-plane XGS instrument using mature CCD technology

ACCESS Pointing Control System

ACCESS (Actively-Corrected Coronograph for Exoplanet System Studies) was one of four medium-class exoplanet concepts selected for the NASA Astrophysics Strategic Mission Concept Study (ASMCS) program in 2008/2009. The ACCESS study evaluated four major coronograph concepts under a common space observatory. This paper describes the high precision pointing control system (PCS) baselined for this observatory

Overview of Technologies for Direct Optical Imaging of Exoplanets

International audienc

Overview of Technologies for Direct Optical Imaging of Exoplanets

International audienc