JPL: Smallest Satellite to Detect an Exoplanet

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JPL: Smallest Satellite to Detect an Exoplanet

Post by bystander » Fri Jun 05, 2020 10:24 pm

Smallest Satellite to Detect an Exoplanet
NASA | JPL-Caltech | ASTERIA | 2020 Jun 02

About the size of a briefcase, the CubeSat was built to test new technologies but exceeded expectations by spotting a planet outside our solar system.

asteria[1].gif
ASTERIA was deployed from the International Space Station on November 20, 2017.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Long before it was deployed into low-Earth orbit from the International Space Station in Nov. 2017, the tiny ASTERIA spacecraft had a big goal: to prove that a satellite roughly the size of a briefcase could perform some of the complex tasks much larger space observatories use to study exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. A new paper soon to be published in the Astronomical Journal describes how ASTERIA (short for Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics) didn't just demonstrate it could perform those tasks but went above and beyond, detecting the known exoplanet 55 Cancri e.

Scorching hot and about twice the size of Earth, 55 Cancri e orbits extremely close to its Sun-like parent star. Scientists already knew the planet's location; looking for it was a way to test ASTERIA's capabilities. The tiny spacecraft wasn't initially designed to perform science; rather, as a technology demonstration, the mission's goal was to develop new capabilities for future missions. The team's technological leap was to build a small spacecraft that could conduct fine pointing control - essentially the ability to stay very steadily focused on an object for long periods.

Based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the mission team engineered new instruments and hardware, pushing past existing technological barriers to create their payload. Then they had to test their prototype in space. Though its prime mission was only 90 days, ASTERIA received three mission extensions before the team lost contact with it last December. ...

Demonstrating high-precision photometry with a CubeSat:
ASTERIA observations of 55 Cancri e
~ Mary Knapp et al
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