The European Space Agency (ESA) announced today that the CHaracterizing ExOPlanets Satellite (Cheops) will be the first small satellite in ESA’s Science Programme.  The announcement comes just two days after European astronomers revealed they had discovered an exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our Sun, using a ground-based telescope.

Scheduled for launch in 2017, Cheops will join other ground- and space-based instruments searching for and studying planets orbiting other stars in the universe — exoplanets.  In particular it will be looking for “super-Earths,” planets more massive than Earth up to the size of Neptune.   The project is a partnership between ESA and Switzerland.  The satellite will be placed into an 800-kilometer sun-synchronous Earth orbit.

Cheops will look for planets using the transit approach where it will detect the dimming of a star as a planet passes in front of it.  It will focus on nearby bright stars already known to have planets and measure the radius of those planets.  If a planet’s mass is known, its density then can be calculated thereby revealing other characteristics.

The small satellite category of ESA space science missions is new and attracted 26 proposals when it was announced last spring.  The satellites are supposed to be low cost and developed quickly.  ESA refers to this as a “possible new class” of ESA missions suggesting that its success or failure in meeting those criteria could determine the future of the category.

The astrophysics community is quite excited about exoplanets these days.  Data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope has confirmed the existence of 77 planets around other stars in our galaxy, with another 2,321 candidates for which additional data is required before confirmation.  The European discovery regarding Alpha Centauri earlier this week was made using a telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

CORRECTION:  The press conference is next Friday, October 26, not today.  

An ammonia leak on one of the International Space Station’s (ISS’s) radiators means that NASA astronaut and ISS commander Suni Williams and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide will be taking another spacewalk very soon.   NASA will hold a news conference at 1:00 pm CT (2:00 pm ET) on Friday, October 26, to discuss those plans.

The spacewalk is scheduled for November 1.

Former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and space scientist Jonathan Lunine will co-chair the National Research Council’s new study on the future of the human spaceflight program.

Perry currently is a professor at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.  Lunine is a professor at Cornell University and Director of its Center for Radiophysics and Space Research.

The study was requested by Congress in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, which directed NASA to contract with the NRC in FY2012 (which ended last month).   The study officially got under way in August, but the co-chairs were named just today; other committee members have not been announced yet.   NRC officials have previously indicated that the study would take about 22 months to complete.

According to its Statement of Task, the committee will “provide findings, rationale, prioritized recommendations, and decision rules that could enable and guide future planning for U.S. human space exploration” for the FY2014-FY2023 time period “while considering the program’s likely evolution in 2015-2030.”

Perry was Secretary of Defense from 1994-1997 after other stints at DOD — including under secretary of defense for research and engineering — and a long business career in high-tech companies.    HIs doctorate is in mathematics and he is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Lunine is a highly respected space scientist whose work spans planetary science, theoretical astrophysics and astrobiology.  He is involved in planetary exploration missions like Cassini-Huygens and Juno, and is also a member of the science team for the James Webb Space Telescope.  He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

The pairing of two individuals from the often disparate fields of science and engineering parallels NASA’s current effort through the Mars Program Planning Group to develop a Mars exploration strategy that responds both to the agency’s science goals and the President’s directive to send humans to orbit Mars in the 2030s.  NASA’s science programs are closely tied to priorities identified by NRC “decadal surveys” conducted about every 10 years (a decade) for the next 10 years of research.   Lunine was a member of the steering committee for the most recent (2010) decadal survey for astronomy and astrophysics.

Correction:  The spelling of Dr. Lunine’s first name in the first sentence has been corrected, adding the “t” in Jonathan.

The B612 Foundation announced on Thursday that its Sentinel Special Review Team (SSRT) gave a thumbs up on the technical soundness of the Foundation’s implementation plans and mission design for its Sentinel asteroid hunting mission.   The Foundation, led by former astronauts Ed Lu and Rusty Schweickart, has a Space Act Agreement with NASA to further the goal of launching a privately funded spacecraft to identify and catalog asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth.

The Ball Aerospace-built infrared (IR) space telescope would be placed into a “Venus-trailing” orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in 2017 under current plans.  The project is sometimes described as a “commercial” space science mission, but it is more accurate to call it a philanthropic activity.   The Foundation plans to make all the data publicly available, not to sell it or otherwise try to recoup its costs.

In an interview, Lu described the project as being similar to ground-based telescopes such as the Keck telescopes in Hawai and the Allen radio telescope array that were built with money from individuals interested in advancing knowledge.    He said typically philanthropic projects of this magnitude obtain about 50 percent of their funding from a top tier of one, two or three donors, another 30 percent from a second tier of a couple of hundred donors, and the remaining 20 percent from a very large number of smaller donors.  He said most donors to such projects are not motivated by the idea of an “edifice” being erected as a legacy, but by a desire to “give back” and “make a difference.”

An advantage of a project like Sentinel, he adds, is that it is “addressing a problem that will fix a problem” rather than some more nebulous goal.  The problem to be solved is cataloging a larger number of asteroids that could pose a threat to the planet than can be observed using ground-based telescopes. 

The Foundation released the names of the individuals who comprise the SSRT — a veritable who’s who of experts in buiding and managing robotic space programs — chosen by the Foundation or appointed by NASA.    NASA is working with the Foundation through a Space Act Agreement signed in May under which NASA will provide technical advice and use of the Deep Space Network (DSN) to communicate with Sentinel during its 6.5 year mission.  NASA has its own asteroid cataloging activity, but it is limited to ground-based instruments.  The likelihood that the agency will be provided with adequate resources to build and launch its own dedicated asteroid-hunting space telescope is deemed to be very small, hence the Foundation’s efforts to fund the mission privately.

The 11-member SSRT is led by Tom Gavin, former Director of Flight Projects and Mission Success at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which builds and operates many of NASA’s deep space probes.   Other members include Steve Battel of Battel Engineering, an expert on progam management and systems engineering who just completed six years as a member of the National Academies Space Studies Board; John Casani, who managed the Voyager, Galileo and Cassini missions at JPL and led the independent review of the James Webb Space Telescope program in 2010; and Orlando Figueroa, who retired from NASA after serving as Director of NASA’s Mars Program and who just led a team that outlined options for reconfiguring the Mars exploration program in the wake of budget cuts and a desire to make the program responsive both to the agency’s science and human exploration goals.

The SSRT completed its first “Program Concept and Implementation Review” in September and found that the “implementation plans and mission design, as put forward by the B612 Foundation and its partner Ball Aerospace, are technically sound and will lead to a successful Sentinel mission.” 

The task of the Sentinel project is to catalog asteroids that could threaten Earth, but the B612 Foundation’s goal is much bigger — “to protect the future of humanity on Earth while opening up the solar system.”   Lu and Schweickart have been leaders of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) effort to promote international planning for how to deflect any asteroids that might have Earth in its sights.  Lu is co-inventor of the “gravity-tractor” concept to alter an asteroid’s trajectory so it would avoid Earth.