Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. 24/7 Space News .




EXO WORLDS
How Engineers Revamped Spitzer to Probe Exoplanets
by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 27, 2013


Over its ten years in space, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has evolved into a premier tool for studying exoplanets. The engineers and scientists behind Spitzer did not have this goal in mind when they designed the observatory back in the 1990s. But thanks to its extraordinary stability, and a series of engineering reworks after launch, Spitzer now has observational powers far beyond its original limits and expectations. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Now approaching its 10th anniversary, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has evolved into a premier observatory for an endeavor not envisioned in its original design: the study of worlds around other stars, called exoplanets. While the engineers and scientists who built Spitzer did not have this goal in mind, their visionary work made this unexpected capability possible.

Thanks to the extraordinary stability of its design and a series of subsequent engineering reworks, the space telescope now has observational powers far beyond its original limits and expectations.

"When Spitzer launched back in 2003, the idea that we would use it to study exoplanets was so crazy that no one considered it," said Sean Carey of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "But now the exoplanet science work has become a cornerstone of what we do with the telescope."

Spitzer views the universe in the infrared light that is a bit less energetic than the light our eyes can see. Infrared light can easily pass through stray cosmic gas and dust, allowing researchers to peer into dusty stellar nurseries, the centers of galaxies, and newly forming planetary systems.

This infrared vision of Spitzer's also translates into exoplanet snooping. When an exoplanet crosses or "transits" in front of its star, it blocks out a tiny fraction of the starlight. These mini-eclipses as glimpsed by Spitzer reveal the size of an alien world.

Exoplanets emit infrared light as well, which Spitzer can capture to learn about their atmospheric compositions. As an exoplanet orbits its sun, showing different regions of its surface to Spitzer's cameras, changes in overall infrared brightness can speak to the planet's climate.

A decrease in brightness as the exoplanet then goes behind its star can also provide a measurement of the world's temperature.

While the study of the formation of stars and the dusty environments from which planets form had always been a cornerstone of Spitzer's science program, its exoplanet work only became possible by reaching an unprecedented level of sensitivity, beyond its original design specifications.

Researchers had actually finalized the telescope's design in 1996 before any transiting exoplanets had even been discovered. The high degree of precision in measuring brightness changes needed for observing transiting exoplanets was not considered feasible in infrared because no previous infrared instrument had offered anything close to what was needed.

Nevertheless, Spitzer was built to have excellent control over unwanted temperature variations and a better star-targeting pointing system than thought necessary to perform its duties. Both of these foresighted design elements have since paid dividends in obtaining the extreme precision required for studying transiting exoplanets.

The fact that Spitzer can still do any science work at all still can be credited to some early-in-the-game, innovative thinking. Spitzer was initially loaded with enough coolant to keep its three temperature-sensitive science instruments running for at least two-and-a-half years. This "cryo" mission ended up lasting more than five-and-a-half-years before exhausting the coolant.

But Spitzer's engineers had a built-in backup plan. A passive cooling system has kept one set of infrared cameras humming along at a super-low operational temperature of minus 407 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 244 Celsius, or 29 degrees above absolute zero). The infrared cameras have continued operating at full sensitivity, letting Spitzer persevere in a "warm" extended mission, so to speak, though still extremely cold by Earthly standards.

To stay so cool, Spitzer is painted black on the side that faces away from the sun, which enables the telescope to radiate away a maximum amount of heat into space. On the sun-facing side, Spitzer has a shiny coating that reflects as much of the heat from the sun and solar panels as possible. It is the first infrared telescope to use this innovative design and has set the standard for subsequent missions.

Fully transitioning Spitzer into an exoplanet spy required some clever modifications in-flight as well, long after it flew beyond the reach of human hands into an Earth-trailing orbit. Despite the telescope's excellent stability, a small "wobbling" remained as it pointed at target stars. The cameras also exhibited small brightness fluctuations when a star moved slightly across an individual pixel of the camera.

The wobble, coupled with the small variation in the cameras, produced a periodic brightening and dimming of light from a star, making the delicate task of measuring exoplanet transits that much more difficult.

To tackle these issues, engineers first began looking into a source for the wobble. They noticed that the telescope's trembling followed an hourly cycle. This cycle, it turned out, coincided with that of a heater, which kicks on periodically to keep a battery aboard Spitzer at a certain temperature. The heater caused a strut between the star trackers and telescope to flex a bit, making the position of the telescope wobble compared to the stars being tracked.

Ultimately, in October 2010, the engineers figured out that the heater did not need to be cycled through its full hour and temperature range -- 30 minutes and about 50 percent of the heat would do. This tweak served to cut the telescope's wobble in half.

Spitzer's engineers and scientists were still not satisfied, however. In September 2011, they succeeded in repurposing Spitzer's Pointing Control Reference Sensor "Peak-Up" camera. This camera was used during the original cryo mission to put gathered infrared light precisely into a spectrometer and to perform routine calibrations of the telescope's star-trackers, which help point the observatory.

The telescope naturally wobbles back and forth a bit as it stares at a particular target star or object. Given this unavoidable jitter, being able to control where light goes within the infrared camera is critical for obtaining precise measurements. The engineers applied the Peak-Up to the infrared camera observations, thus allowing astronomers to place stars precisely on the center of a camera pixel.

Since repurposing the Peak-Up Camera, astronomers have taken this process even further, by carefully "mapping" the quirks of a single pixel within the camera. They have essentially found a "sweet spot" that returns the most stable observations. About 90 percent of Spitzer's exoplanet observations are finely targeted to a sub-pixel level, down to a particular quarter of a pixel.

"We can use the Peak-Up camera to position ourselves very precisely on the camera and put light right on the best part of a pixel," said Carey. "So you put the light on the sweet spot and just let Spitzer stare."

These three accomplishments -- the modified heater cycling, repurposed Peak-Up camera and the in-depth characterization of individual pixels in the camera -- have more than doubled Spitzer's stability and targeting, giving the telescope exquisite sensitivity when it comes to taking exoplanet measurements.

"Because of these engineering modifications, Spitzer has been transformed into an exoplanet-studying telescope," said Carey. "We expect plenty of great exoplanetary science to come from Spitzer in the future."

.


Related Links
Spitzer at NASA
Spitzer at Caltech
Lands Beyond Beyond - extra solar planets - news and science
Life Beyond Earth






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle








EXO WORLDS
ESA selects SSTL to design Exoplanet satellite mission
Guildford, UK (SPX) Sep 15, 2013
Surrey Satellite Technology has been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) for the competitive design phase of CHEOPS science satellite, which will improve mankind's understanding of exoplanets - planets orbiting distant stars outside our solar system. The contractor selection for the implementation phase is planned by mid-2014 and the launch is scheduled late 2017. The CHaracterisin ... read more


EXO WORLDS
Mission to moon will boost research and awareness

Mighty Eagle Improves Autonomous Landing Software With Successful Flight

Watch Out for the Harvest Moon

Chang'e-3 lunar probe sent to launch site

EXO WORLDS
First scoop of Mars soil contains 2 percent water: study

NASA Rover Inspects Pebbly Rocks at Martian Waypoint

Martian Life: Good or Bad?

Communications Tests Go the Distance for MAVEN

EXO WORLDS
"GRAVITY" is Almost Here

International Partnership Releases Space Exploration Benefits Paper

Iran to send second monkey into space

Voyager's departure from the heliosphere

EXO WORLDS
Chinese VP stresses peaceful use of space

China's space station to open for foreign peers

Last Days for Tiangong

China civilian technology satellites put into use

EXO WORLDS
New space crew joins ISS on Olympic torch mission

Station Crew Readies for Cygnus' Sunday Arrival

American, two Russians take shortcut to space

Tech glitch delays space station berthing to Saturday

EXO WORLDS
Arianespace and Astrium sign deal to begin production of 18 new Ariane 5 vehicles

Problems with Proton booster fixed

Decontamination continues at Baikonur after Proton abortive launc

Russia launches three communication satellites

EXO WORLDS
How Engineers Revamped Spitzer to Probe Exoplanets

ESA selects SSTL to design Exoplanet satellite mission

Coldest Brown Dwarfs Blur Lines between Stars and Planets

NASA-funded Program Helps Amateur Astronomers Detect Alien Worlds

EXO WORLDS
NGC Completes Safety of Flight Testing on Common Infrared Countermeasure System

Green photon beams more agile than optical tweezers

Space oddity: the mystery of 2013 QW1

Domain walls as new information storage medium




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement