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...
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.
More like this
NuSTAR lives!
Thus one and all, thus great and small,
the Rich as well as Poor,
And those of place, as the most base,
do stand the Judge before.
They are arraign'd, and there detain'd
before Griffin's Judgement seat
With trembling fear their Doom to hear,
I haven't spent much time in that den of iniquity, DC, lately
but... third hand rumours percolate back to me, and if I can't sleep, neither should you
Beyond Einstein
1) JDEM
2) LISA