Twinkle: a small satellite spectroscopy mission for the next phase of exoplanet science

Stotesbury, Ian; Edwards, Billy; Lavigne, Jean-François; Pesquita, Vasco; Veilleux, James; Windred, Philip; Al-Refaie, Ahmed; Bradley, Lawrence; Ma, Sushang; Savini, Giorgio; Tinetti, Giovanna; Birnstiel, Til; Dodson-Robinson, Sally; Ercolano, Barbara; Feliz, Dax; Hernitschek, Nina; Holdsworth, Daniel; Jiang, Ing-Guey; Griffin, Matthew J.; Lowson, Nataliea; Molaverdikhani, Karan; Neilson, Hilding; Phillips, Caprice; Preibisch, Thomas; Sarkar, Subhajit; Stassun, Keivan; Ward-Thompson, Derek; Wright, Duncan; Yang, Ming; Yeh, Li-Chin; Zhou, Ji-Lin; Archer, Richard; Barrathwaj Raman Mohan, Yoga; Joshua, Max; Tessenyi, Marcell; Tennyson, Jonathan; Wilcock, Benjamin; Coyle, Laura E.; Perrin, Marshall D. und Matsuura, Shuji (2022): Twinkle: a small satellite spectroscopy mission for the next phase of exoplanet science. Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, Montréal, Québec, Canada, 17-23 July 2022. Coyle, Laura E.; Matsuura, Shuji und Perrin, Marshall D. (Hrsg.): In: Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, Proceedings of SPIE Bd. 12180 Bellingham, Washington: SPIE. S. 235

Abstract

With a focus on off-the-shelf components, Twinkle is the first in a series of cost competitive small satellites managed and financed by Blue Skies Space Ltd. The satellite is based on a high-heritage Airbus platform that will carry a 0.45 m telescope and a spectrometer which will provide simultaneous wavelength coverage from 0.5–4.5 μm. The spacecraft prime is Airbus Stevenage while the telescope is being developed by Airbus Toulouse and the spectrometer by ABB Canada. Scheduled to begin scientific operations in 2025, Twinkle will sit in a thermally-stable, sun-synchronous, low-Earth orbit. The mission has a designed operation lifetime of at least seven years and, during the first three years of operation, will conduct two large-scale survey programmes: one focused on Solar System objects and the other dedicated to extrasolar targets. Here we present an overview of the architecture of the mission, refinements in the design approach, and some of the key science themes of the extrasolar survey.

• Dokumententyp: Konferenzbeitrag (Paper)
• Fakultät: Physik > Astronomie und Astrophysik, Kosmologie
• Themengebiete: 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 530 Physik
• Ort: Bellingham, Washington
• Bemerkung: ISBN 9781510653412 ISBN: 9781510653429 (electronic)
• Sprache: Englisch