Yale Astronomy & Astrophysics Colloquium - Margaret Meixner

Event time: 
Thursday, April 11, 2019 - 2:30pm
Speaker: 
Margaret Meixner
Speaker Institution: 
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Talk Title: 
The Origins Space Telescope: a NASA Decadal 2020 Mission Concept
Event description: 

Origins Space Telescope (Origins) mission concept study explores the question “Where did we come from?”  by investigating  the origins of life’s essential elements: carbon (C), oxygen (O), and nitrogen (N), as well as the dust from the first stars, through their buildup in galaxies, to the creation of habitable planetary systems to the transport of water to habitable worlds. Origins and its suite of instruments will utilize next-generation detectors and operate with spectral resolving power from ~3 to 3x105 over wavelengths from 2.8 to 590 mm. The telescope and instruments will be cryocooled to 4.5 K, and the light collecting area, 25 m2, will match that of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), resulting in an astrophysical limited background sensitivity that is >1000 times more sensitive than prior far-IR missions. Origins will be agile enough to observe thousands of square degrees and can be used to conduct wide-shallow surveys to spot rare interesting objects and narrow-deep surveys to probe the early Universe. The Origins’ design builds upon the technical heritage of Spitzer and JWST with advanced cryocoolers and a simple deployment (sunshield) that makes it elegant, stable and agile, yet extremely powerful (Fig ES-1). Origins robust technology development plan ensures mature detectors (Technology Readiness Level 6) by the mid-2020s, in time for Origins to be launche­­d by the mid-2030s.

Origins will measure the missing half of light emitted by galaxies over cosmic time, transforming our understanding of how galaxies and supermassive black holes evolve. Origins will follow the trail of water from the birth of the planet-forming disk to the assembly of pre-planetary materials, and in comets to understand the origin of Earth’s oceans. Building upon and greatly extending the discoveries by JWST, Origins will characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets around nearby M dwarf stars and identify potentially habitable worlds. In these exoplanets, Origins will be able to detect the spectroscopic fingerprints of molecules such as ozone, methane, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, and water, revealing atmospheric biosignatures and providing direct evidence for life. Origins is not only capable of addressing known questions, but its vast discovery space will allow astronomers in the 2030s to understand new phenomena and ask new and important questions about our origins in the Universe.

Location: 
Watson Center A-51 See map
60 Sachem Street
New Haven, CT 06511