SMEX - six up

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.