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Issue 17 - March 2017Please visit Latest Update: March 2017 HEADLINES
Do you have an accomplishment or event you want to share in Community Highlights? Send it to us at nasaexoplanetnews@jpl.nasa.gov. Please limit your submissions to no more than 150 words. 
1. WFIRST Happenings
Chief, Astroparticle Physics Laboratory 2016 will go down as a memorable year for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). We started the year with a huge NASA review. It was called KDP-A (critical design point A), and was our opportunity to convince NASA that WFIRST was ready to move into Phase A. Importantly, this step is the one to make WFIRST an official NASA mission with a budget line in the high-level NASA budgets. The final step was a presentation to top NASA management, chaired by the NASA Associate Administrator and including the Heads of NASA's Directorates, Center Directors and representatives from the Exoplanet Program office and WFIRST project. A lot has been happening since the review. On the technology side, the Coronagraph and the Wide Field Instrument infrared detectors have passed their technology milestones on schedule. It is so amazing to see these large high-tech instruments start to take shape. On the science-center side, there is a good working relationship formed between Goddard, the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). We had a meeting at Princeton organized by David Spergel to discuss organizing early data challenges to get thinking going on data processing. There have been regular meetings organized by Jeremy Kasdin to move the coronagraph hardware and data aspects forward. Read more here... 2. Kepler and K2 Update
Kepler/K2 Project Manager 2017 marks the final year of the Kepler mission, while K2 continues to gather new science data. Last August, the final Kepler photometric products - a complete set of reprocessed short cadence data - were made available through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST: https://archive.stsci.edu/kepler/). The data collected from the K2 mission are available at MAST through Campaign 10 (https://archive.stsci.edu/k2/). K2 is currently in its twelfth campaign. The Kepler mission is nearing the completion of its final catalog, which will be delivered through the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute's (NExScI's) Exoplanet Archive (http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/index.html) in time to support the 2017 Astrophysical Data Analysis Program in the early spring timeframe. The first deliveries of the final Occurrence Rate Products designed to allow researchers to investigate the demographics of exoplanets in unique ways will also be delivered at this time. All final data deliveries will follow shortly thereafter. The Kepler and K2 missions will host a science conference at Ames Research Center in June 2017 (https://keplerscience.arc.nasa.gov/scicon4/), the final such conference for the Kepler mission. Read more here... 3. What do Loch Ness, Kitt Peak, and NN-EXPLORE have in common? NESSI
Steve B. Howell, NASA Ames Research Center Senior Research Scientist The NN-EXPLORE program provides about 50 percent of the observing time on the Kitt Peak WIYN (Wisconsin-Indiana-Yale-NOAO) 3.5-meter telescope to the exoplanet community. WIYN’s suite of instruments include HYDRA, a multi-fiber medium to high-resolution bench spectrograph, WHIRC, a near-IR imager, ODI, an optical wide-field optical imager, and for over a decade, a visiting speckle camera called DSSI (Horch et al. 2009). The telescope’s instruments also include several integral field units, bundles of optical fiber that feed light from the telescope to an instrument, in this case a spectrograph, that lives in an environmentally controlled room in the WIYN telescope basement. Beginning in 2017, thanks to funding support from the NASA Exoplanet program, DSSI has been replaced by a modern, more functional, community available observatory instrument named NESSI. NESSI, the NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet & Stellar Speckle Imager, was commissioned during the fall of 2016 and is now available for community use. Speckle imaging allows telescopes to achieve diffraction limited imaging performance--that is, collecting images with resolutions equal to that which would be possible if the atmosphere were removed. The technique employs digital cameras capable of reading out frames at a very fast rate, effectively "freezing out" atmospheric seeing. The resulting speckles are correlated and combined in Fourier space to produce reconstructed images with resolutions at the diffraction limit of the telescope (see Howell et al., 2011). Achievable spatial resolutions at WIYN are 39 milliarcseconds (550 nanometers) and 64 milliarcseconds (880 nanometers). Read more here... 4. Annual Technology Gap List report
Deputy Program Technologist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program Technologists in the Exoplanet Exploration Program seek to identify and invest in technology needed for future space observatories that will directly image and characterize exoplanets, in particular Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zones of their stars. We look beyond missions that are currently being built or in development (for example the James Webb Space Telescope [JWST] and the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope [WFIRST]), so that when a mission is selected, NASA will have the technical capability to achieve these ambitious science goals. To help focus our technology investments, we maintain prioritized Technology Gap Lists that are updated annually; the most recent list was released in December 2016. The technology gap list is mainly focused on technical developments needed to construct coronagraphs and starshades, two types of occulters that block the light from a host star, more easily bringing an orbiting exoplanet into view. Read more here... 5. Exoplanet science update
Deputy Program Chief Scientist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program The past year has been rather eventful on the exoplanet front. Over 1,500 confirmed exoplanets were added to the census of planets maintained at the NASA Exoplanet Archive in 2016, mostly from validation of Kepler Objects of Interest, or KOIs. Dozens of new planets were discovered and characterized from the K2 mission. Two of the biggest discoveries over the past year involved finding Earth-size planets orbiting in the habitable zones around nearby stars: the nearest M dwarf Proxima Centauri, and the discovery of the amazing seven-planet transiting system TRAPPIST-1. Unfortunately Proxima Centauri b does not appear to transit its star, but the discovery has spurred numerous theoretical investigations of the properties of the planet, accounting for the properties of its host star. Recent results from characterizing the masses and radii of transiting exoplanets would seem to suggest that Proxima b is almost certainly a rocky world. The remarkable TRAPPIST-1 system contains no less than seven planets with radii ranging from about 71 percent to 113 percent of Earth's radius. The compact system of planets all orbit within about 10 million kilometers of their tiny host star. Read more here... 6. A Busy Year for Exoplanets at the NASA Exoplanet Archive
Deputy Director, NASA Exoplanet Science Institute The NASA Exoplanet Archive, launched in 2011, is an online astronomical exoplanet and stellar catalog and data service that collates and cross-correlates data on exoplanets and their host stars. The archive also provides tools to work with these data, such as interactive tables containing data that can be filtered, downloaded and exported, a tool for periodogram calculations, a Kepler light curve viewer, and a service that predicts exoplanet transit times. 2016 was one of the archive's busiest, with an increasing number of planet discoveries, new data from Kepler, K2, the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) survey and other projects, and the release of new tools and user-requested features. In one year alone we added 1,521 newly confirmed planets and their stellar and planetary parameters from the published literature, including 1,284 Kepler exoplanets validated in Morton et al. 2016, as well as Proxima Centauri b and other planets that made the news. As of February 2017, the total number of exoplanets in the archive is more than 3,440. The archive also added a new table of emission spectroscopy data, similar to the existing transmission spectroscopy table. Read more here... 7. HabEx study concept moves ahead
Study Scientist for the Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission Study The Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission (HabEx) is one of four mission concepts currently being studied by NASA in preparation for the 2020 Astrophysics Decadal Survey. The HabEx mission concept is a large (about 4 to 6.5 meter) stable optical telescope in space with unprecedented resolution to directly image exoplanets and enable galactic, extragalactic, and solar system astrophysics. The HabEx concept is ripe for development, being both technologically and scientifically implementable in the next decade. The primary goal of HabEx is, for the first time, to directly image and characterize Earth-like exoplanets. However, HabEx will also study the full range of exoplanets, providing in particular the first complete "family portraits" of planets around our nearest sun-like neighbors. Read more here... 8. LUVOIR study concept refined
Study Scientist for LUVOIR The Large UV/Optical/IR Surveyor (LUVOIR) is a concept for a highly capable, multi-wavelength observatory with ambitious science goals. This mission would enable great leaps forward in a broad range of science, from the epoch of reionization, through galaxy formation and evolution, star and planet formation, to solar system remote sensing. LUVOIR also has the major goal of characterizing large numbers of exoplanets, including those that might be habitable -- or even inhabited. A Decadal Mission Concept Study for LUVOIR began in Jan 2016; further information on all aspects of the study is available at https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/luvoir/.
Under the direction of a 24-member Science and Technology Definition Team (STDT), the LUVOIR study has made excellent progress since its inception. Three public meetings of the STDT have taken place; one of these meetings was held jointly with the HabEx STDT. The LUVOIR team has also participated in a number of other conferences, including a full-day special meeting to build bridges with technologists and European scientists, held in conjunction with last summer's SPIE conference in Edinburgh. Information on future STDT meetings (and remote participation info) may be found in the "Events" tab on the LUVOIR website. Read more here... 9. Exoplanet Studies with the Origins Space Telescope
Margaret Meixner, Space Telescope Science Institute Origins Space Telescope Science and Technology Definition Team The Origins Space Telescope (OST) is the mission concept for the Far-Infrared Surveyor, one of the four large-mission science and technology definition studies sponsored by NASA for the 2020 Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal survey. The mission has four science themes: (i) Characterizing small bodies in the outer solar system; (ii) Tracing the signatures of life and the ingredients of habitable worlds; (iii) Unveiling the growth of black holes and galaxies over cosmic time; and (iv) Charting the rise of metals, dust and the first galaxies. We outline the science drivers related to extra-solar planets. Read more here... 10. The Restructured Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship (RTF) Program
The Astrophysics Division initiated the Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowships (RTF) Program in 2011 in response to a recommendation from the Astrophysics Subcommittee (APS). RTF proposals are solicited through Element D.9 of the annual Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) solicitation. The purpose of the RTF program is to foster the career development of astrophysics instrumentation technologists who are within seven years of obtaining a PhD. The program provides the leverage of a named fellowship title and laboratory startup funds to help advance the Fellow's career. The original RTF solicitation involved a two-step process, where, during the first phase called the Concept Phase, selected applicants developed an in-depth plan and proposal for a four-year Development Phase effort. This Development Phase proposal was peer reviewed approximately nine months after the start of the Concept Phase, and the successful proposers continued their technology development efforts as Fellows for an additional four years. Read more here... 11. Exoplanet Program Public Engagement Update
NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program The Exoplanet Program's Public Engagement team launched a new thematic website combining the PlanetQuest public engagement website with the Exoplanet Program site for professionals. The new site is https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/. Among many new features of the site is the Strange New Worlds gallery (https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/strange-new-worlds/) which combines many of the features of Eyes on Exoplanets into a browser based format--while still leveraging the power of the NASA Exoplanet Archive. At September's Star Trek: Mission New York convention, the Exoplanet Program led an exoplanet-themed area within the NASA Headquarters booth, coordinating representation from the Program Office (JPL), Kepler/K2 (Ames) and TESS (Goddard) missions. The booth presence was combined with social media activities including a Facebook Live event, a Snapchat story, and a special NASA Tumblr post. Read more about Baby Kepler (pictured above) here... To SUBSCRIBE - click here
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