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News Archive
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December 2000
SIRTF Legacy Science Program Selected
The SIRTF Science Center (SSC) at the California Institute of Technology, on behalf of
NASA and the SIRTF Project Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, announces the
selection of projects that will comprise the SIRTF Legacy Science Program.
Six investigations were chosen following a competitive scientific review held at the
SSC in October. These projects will utilize 3160 hours of SIRTF observing time,
primarily in the first year of the mission, to conduct large and coherent science
investigations. The processed data and post-pipeline data products from these
projects will create substantial databases that will be invaluable for archival
research, and in planning subsequent programs on SIRTF or on other space-borne,
airborne, and ground-based observatories.
The selected projects, listed in alphabetical order by the Principal Investigator's
last name, are listed below. Detailed abstracts and complete lists of investigators
will be posted online in December, after the teams revise their original abstracts
in response to modifications to their proposed investigation (as necessary).
- Ed Churchwell (University of Wisconsin)
- and 13 Co-Investigators at 6 institutions
"The SIRTF Galactic Plane Survey"
(400 hours)
A 240 square degree IRAC survey of the inner Galactic plane, extending from
10 to 70 degrees in longitude on either side of the Galactic Center, and from
-1 to +1 degree in latitude. The primary science goals include studying the
structure of the inner Galaxy and investigating the statistics and physics of
star formation.
- Mark Dickinson (Space Telescope Science Institute)
- and 38 Co-Investigators at 13 institutions
"GOODS: Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey"
(647 hours)
A deep 300 square arcmin IRAC and MIPS (24-micron) survey that overlaps deep fields
obtained by HST and CXO. The primary science goals include the study of galaxy
formation and evolution over a wide range of redshift and cosmic lookback time.
- Neal Evans II (University of Texas)
- and 10 Co-Investigators at 8 institutions
"From Molecular Clouds to Planets"
(400 hours)
Imaging surveys of nearby molecular clouds, with follow-up spectroscopy of
young and embedded stellar sources. The primary science include the study
of the evolution of molecular cores into protostars and disks, the incidence
and early evolution of sub-stellar objects, and the spatial structure of groups
and clusters.
- Robert Kennicutt (University of Arizona)
- and 14 Co-Investigators at 7 institutions
"SINGS: The SIRTF Nearby Galaxies Survey - Physics of the Star-Forming ISM and Galaxy Evolution"
(512 hours)
A comprehensive imaging and spectroscopic survey of 75 nearby galaxies in order to
characterize their large-scale infrared properties. The primary science goals are
to understand the physical processes connecting star formation to the ISM and to
provide diagnostic templates for interpreting observations of objects in the distant
universe.
- Carol Lonsdale (Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, Caltech)
- and 19 Co-Investigators at 9 institutions
"SWIRE: The SIRTF Wide-area Infrared Extragalactic Survey"
(851 hours)
Wide-area, high-latitude imaging surveys of up to 100 square degrees, reaching to
cosmological redshifts of ~2.5. The primary science goals include the evolution
of dusty, star-forming galaxies, evolved stellar populations and AGN as a function
of environment. The resultant catalogs will include more than 2 million
infrared-selected galaxies.
- Michael Meyer (University of Arizona)
- and 18 Co-Investigators at 12 institutions
"The Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems: Placing Our Solar System in Context"
(350 hours)
An imaging and spectroscopic survey of hundreds of young stars with accretion disks,
ranging in age from a few million years to one billion years. The primary science
goal is to trace the evolution of planetary systems from stellar accretion through
the coalescence of solids and accretion of remnant molecular gas, and on through the
planetary debris disk phase.
-
The Legacy Science TAC Chair, in formally recommending the projects to the SSC Director, offered this statement:
- "Taken together, the projects we recommend represent an exciting use of NASA's next
major astrophysical observatory. Each of the projects will yield the superb science
that we expect of a major investment of time in a NASA Great Observatory. A hallmark
of each of these projects is that they fully exploit the unique and special
capabilities of SIRTF that make it a major NASA mission and the highest priority
space project of the 1991 National Academy of Sciences Decade Review."
Mission Status Archive
December 2000
NASA SETS NEW LAUNCH DATE FOR SPACE INFRARED TELESCOPE FACILITY
NASA has announced a new launch readiness date of July 15, 2002 for the
Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF). The launch, originally scheduled
for December 2001, has been rescheduled due to the late delivery of the
Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) instrument.
SIRTF is designed to explore the cosmos in the infrared portion of the
electromagnetic spectrum, where it will study young galaxies and stars,
dust disks around stars where planets may be forming, objects hidden by
dust, and some of the most distant objects in the Universe.
IRAC, one of three instruments to be installed and flown on SIRTF, will be
used for a wide variety of astronomical investigations during SIRTF's mission,
including study of the early universe, searching for brown dwarfs and protoplanets,
and the study of galaxies.
IRAC was originally scheduled for shipment from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD, to Ball Aerospace in Boulder, CO, on April 1, 2000, for integration
into the Cryogenic Telescope Assembly (CTA). After this initial assembly, it was
to go through testing to simulate the vibration it will receive during launch and
the conditions it will experience in space (also called "environmental testing"),
before being shipped to Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, CA, for integration with the
SIRTF spacecraft. However, a portion of the IRAC was not shipped to Ball until
September 16, with the remaining components to be shipped this winter.
The primary cause of the delay of final shipment of the IRAC is a problem with the
software program residing within the electronics that controls the instrument.
During testing, it was found that of the IRAC software program did not perform
as expected in a number of ways. Work continues to fix the software problems.
In addition, hardware problems were identified and fixed over the past several
months, which also contributed to the delay. There is one remaining hardware
problem in the IRAC electronics that is currently being fixed - the replacement
of capacitors due a faulty production lot by the supplier.
SIRTF is the fourth and final of NASA's Great Observatories, which include the
Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Compton Gamma Ray
Observatory. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. manages
the SIRTF mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is
managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.