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Register a new userThe Science Case for a Titan Flagship-class Orbiter with Probes
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We outline a flagship-class mission concept focused on studying Titan as a global system, with particular emphasis on the polar regions. Investigating Titan from the unique standpoint of a polar orbit would enable comprehensive global maps to uncover the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere, and the topography and geophysical environment of the surface and subsurface. The mission includes two key elements: (1) an orbiter spacecraft, which also acts as a data relay, and (2) one or more small probes to directly investigate Titans seas and make the first direct measurements of their liquid composition and physical environment. The orbiter would carry a sophisticated remote sensing payload, including a novel topographic lidar, a long-wavelength surface-penetrating radar, a sub-millimeter sounder for winds and for mesospheric/thermospheric composition, and a camera and near-infrared spectrometer. An instrument suite to analyze particles and fields would include a mass spectrometer to focus on the interactions between Titans escaping upper atmosphere and the solar wind and Saturnian magnetosphere. The orbiter would enter a stable polar orbit around 1500 to 1800 km, from which vantage point it would make global maps of the atmosphere and surface. One or more probes, released from the orbiter, would investigate Titans seas in situ, including possible differences in composition between higher and lower latitude seas, as well as the atmosphere during the parachute descent. The number of probes, as well as the instrument complement on the orbiter and probe, remain to be finalized during a mission study that we recommend to NASA as part of the NRC Decadal Survey for Planetary Science now underway, with the goal of an overall mission cost in the small flagship category of ~$2 bn. International partnerships, similar to Cassini-Huygens, may also be included for consideration.
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Among the most fascinating and hotly-debated areas in contemporary astrophysics are the means by which planetary systems are assembled from the large rotating disks of gas and dust which attend a stellar birth. Although important work has already been, and is still being done both in theory and observation, a full understanding of the physics of planet formation can only be achieved by opening observational windows able to directly witness the process in action. The key requirement is then to probe planet-forming systems at the natural spatial scales over which material is being assembled. By definition, this is the so-called Hill Sphere which delineates the region of influence of a gravitating body within its surrounding environment. The Planet Formation Imager project (PFI) has crystallized around this challenging goal: to deliver resolved images of Hill-Sphere-sized structures within candidate planet-hosting disks in the nearest star-forming regions. In this contribution we outline the primary science case of PFI. For this purpose, we briefly review our knowledge about the planet-formation process and discuss recent observational results that have been obtained on the class of transition disks. Spectro-photometric and multi-wavelength interferometric studies of these systems revealed the presence of extended gaps and complex density inhomogeneities that might be triggered by orbiting planets. We present detailed 3-D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of disks with single and multiple embedded planets, from which we compute synthetic images at near-infrared, mid-infrared, far-infrared, and sub-millimeter wavelengths, enabling a direct comparison of the signatures that are detectable with PFI and complementary facilities such as ALMA. From these simulations, we derive some preliminary specifications that will guide the array design and technology roadmap of the facility.
The five classical Uranian moons are possible ocean worlds that exhibit bizarre geologic landforms, hinting at recent surface-interior communication. However, Uranus classical moons, as well as its ring moons and irregular satellites, remain poorly understood. We assert that a Flagship-class orbiter is needed to explore the Uranian satellites.
WFIRST is the highest priority space mission of the Decadal review, however, it is unlikely to begin in this decade primarily due to a anticipated NASA budget that is unlikely to have sufficient resources to fund such a mission. For this reason we present a lower cost mission that accomplishes all of the WFIRST science as described in the Design Reference Mission 1 with a probe class design. This is effort is motivated by a desire to begin WFIRST in a timely manner and within a budget that can fit within the assets available to NASA on a realistic basis. The design utilizes dichroics to form four focal planes all having the same field of view to use the majority of available photons from a 1.2 meter telescope.
A coming resurgence of super heavy-lift launch vehicles has precipitated an immense interest in the future of crewed spaceflight and even future colonisation efforts. While it is true that a bright future awaits this sector, driven by commercial ventures and the reignited interest of old space-faring nations, and the joining of new ones, little of this attention has been reserved for the science-centric applications of these launchers. The Arcanum mission is a proposal to use these vehicles to deliver an L-class observatory into a highly eccentric orbit around Neptune, with a wide-ranging suite of science goals and instrumentation tackling Solar System science, planetary science, Kuiper Belt Objects and exoplanet systems.
We present the Phase A Science Case for the Multi-conjugate Adaptive-optics Visible Imager-Spectrograph (MAVIS), planned for the Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF) of the Very Large Telescope (VLT). MAVIS is a general-purpose instrument for exploiting the highest possible angular resolution of any single optical telescope available in the next decade, either on Earth or in space, and with sensitivity comparable to (or better than) larger aperture facilities. MAVIS uses two deformable mirrors in addition to the deformable secondary mirror of the AOF, providing a mean V-band Strehl ratio of >10% (goal >15%) across a relatively large (30 arc second) science field. This equates to a resolution of <20mas at 550nm - comparable to the K-band diffraction limit of the next generation of extremely large telescopes, making MAVIS a genuine optical counterpart to future IR-optimised facilities like JWST and the ELT. Moreover, MAVIS will have unprecedented sky coverage for a high-order AO system, accessing at least 50% of the sky at the Galactic Pole, making MAVIS a truly general purpose facility instrument. As such, MAVIS will have both a Nyquist-sampled imager (30x30 arcsec field), and a powerful integral field spectrograph with multiple spatial and spectral modes spanning 370-1000nm. This science case presents a distilled set of thematically linked science cases drawn from the MAVIS White Papers (www.mavis-ao.org/whitepapers), selected to illustrate the driving requirements of the instrument resulting from the recent MAVIS Phase A study.
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