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  2. SMEX - six up

SMEX - six up

By catdynamics on June 9, 2008.

In case you missed it, NASA announced selection of the six SMEX concept studies that will be downselected to two launch missions in 2012-2015.

And the winners are...

  • CPEX: Coronal Physics Explorer - NRL
    Solar coronography - looking at flares and mass ejections
  • GEMS: Gravity and Extreme Magnetism SMEX - GSFC
    X-ray telescope looking at "highly magnetized matter" flowing into supermassive black holes.
    Bonus points for a self-referential two level acronym.
  • IRIS: Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph - LockMart
    Dynamics of the Solar chromosphere and interface.
  • JANUS:Joint Astrophysics Nascent Universe Satellite - PSU
    Oo Ya.
    Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, with Infrared Telescope - looking for high redshift GRBs.
  • NICE: Neutral Ion Coupling Explorer - UCB
    Upper Earth atmosphere and coupling to ionosphere
  • TESS: Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite - MIT
    Six telescope, 2.5 million bright stars. Thousands of planets.

Hmm. One Earth, Two Sun and Three Universe.
I predict one of the Universe missions will make the cut... but which...

NASA announcement



TESS

Most of the mission concepts are still confidential - they're still competing and they have very little time to go from concept to full mission proposal.

Tags
astro

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