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So now, so now. The mission's page says it is ahead of schedule. Like most of the past few missions I have mentioned SIM is an interferometry mission, but this one's goal is not to detect the light of other worlds directly. SIM is an astrometry mission, it will be measuring the positions of nearby stars and seeking the wobble induced by planetary companionship. Among some of its nearer targets SIM might detect worlds as small as twice Earth's mass.
This observatory goes into Earth-trailing orbit, drifting out over the course of several years (5.5) to its placement position 95 million km away. And, surprise surprise! SIM will operate in visual light. Its apertures (for all three scopes) will be only 0.3m, mounted on a 9m baseline.
HAHAHAHAHA! Now I get to toss aside this instrumentation and move to more interesting matters. Also to transform this into a presentation with illustrations and effects and all. 2 hours.
Ehdithe: SIM is supposed to launch sometime before 2016.
Their list of what it could find (minimum size constrained by distance) -
This observatory goes into Earth-trailing orbit, drifting out over the course of several years (5.5) to its placement position 95 million km away. And, surprise surprise! SIM will operate in visual light. Its apertures (for all three scopes) will be only 0.3m, mounted on a 9m baseline.
HAHAHAHAHA! Now I get to toss aside this instrumentation and move to more interesting matters. Also to transform this into a presentation with illustrations and effects and all. 2 hours.
Ehdithe: SIM is supposed to launch sometime before 2016.
Their list of what it could find (minimum size constrained by distance) -
- Earth mass around 6 stars
- Twice Earth mass aruond 30 stars
- 3.2 Earth mass planets around 120 stars
- Neptune massed planets around 2,000 stars (Wikipedia says Neptune is 17 times as massive as Oit)
