Near Earth Astrometric Telescope

Details Near Earth Astrometric Telescope Near Earth Astrometric Telescope

Sep 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011ess.....2.2905l&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, ESS meeting #2, #29.05

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The main scientific goal of the NEAT (Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope) mission proposal is to detect and characterize planetary systems in an exhaustive way down to 1 Earth mass in the HZ and further away, around nearby F, G, and K stars. This survey would provide the actual planetary masses, the full characterization of the orbits including their inclination, for all the components of the planetary system (located within or further than the HZ) down to that mass limit.
Only extremely-high-precision astrometry, in space, can detect the dynamical effect due to low mass orbiting planets on their central star. NEAT will continue the work performed by Hipparcos (1 mili-as precision) and Gaia (7 micro-as aimed) by reaching a (0.05 micro-as, 1sigma) precision. The mission profile is driven by the fact that the two main modules of the payload, the telescope and the focal plane, are placed 40m away leading to a formation flying option. The NEAT satellites are foreseen to operate at L2 for 5 years.
The principle is to measure the angles between the target star, usually bright (R < 6), and fainter reference stars (R < 11) using a metrology system that projects dynamical Young’s fringes onto the focal plane. The proposed mission architecture relies on the use of two satellites of about 700 kg each in formation flying, offering a capability of more than 20,000 reconfigurations.

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