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Characterizing Habitable Worlds... From the Moon

Characterizing Habitable Worlds... From the Moon. Margaret Turnbull - STScI / Carnegie. First: An astrobiologist appreciates the cosmic significance of this meeting. What will they do?. A Few Take-home Lessons:. The moon is fine for astronomy, but not necessarily better than space.

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Characterizing Habitable Worlds... From the Moon

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  1. Characterizing Habitable Worlds... From the Moon Margaret Turnbull - STScI / Carnegie

  2. First: An astrobiologist appreciates the cosmic significance of this meeting. What will they do?

  3. A Few Take-home Lessons: The moon is fine for astronomy, but not necessarily better than space. Challenges are present (dust, radiation, thermal fluctuations) but surmountable. If we go to the moon, it will NOT be so that we can do astrophysics.

  4. A Few Take-home Lessons: Whether and how we conduct astrophysics on the moon will depend on events which we can inform but not control or predict. Now is the time to identify sexy, simple astrophysics that can be carried out from the moon in the “near” term. FOR EXAMPLE...

  5. Characterizing Habitable Worlds Around Nearby Stars How common are they? How old are they? Where are they? Are they inhabited? Can we go there?

  6. The Terrestrial Planet Finder The technology driver is the need to suppress starlight by a factor of 1 million (at mid-IR wavelengths) or 10 billion (at optical wavelengths) at milliarcsec from the star...probably needs to be a space mission, not lunar-based. TPF-I TPF-C 3-4m x 3-4 6.5-17 um 10-6 starlight suppression 40 milliarcsec IWA 10-10 starlight suppression at optical wavelengths 0.5-1.05 um

  7. But Before TPF can happen, We have to understand: -what does a habitable planet look like? -how can we probe its surface, atmosphere, and life forms? => and TPF precursor science begins at home...

  8. The Terrestrial Planet Finder TPF-I TPF-C 3-4m x 3-4 6.5-17 um 10-6 starlight suppression

  9. What does our planet look like from (deep-ish) space? Sagan et al. 1993 (Nature 365, 715): Galileo detects abundant oxygen, methane, and spatially variable “red edge” pigments at optical and near-IR wavelengths

  10. What does our planet look like from space? Woolf et al. (2002) and Turnbull et al. (2006): Earthshine => Spatially unresolved signal (like exoplanet observations).

  11. What does our planet look like from space? Terrile et al. 2007: Degeneracies!!

  12. What does our planet look like from space? Change over time may be the key to spatially characterizing planets via spatially unresolved signals

  13. What does our planet look like from space? • Photometric changes ~ 30% (Ford, Seager & Turner 2003)

  14. What does our planet look like from space? • Red edge variations ~30% (Tinetti et al 2006) (no clouds)

  15. What does our planet look like from space? • Thermal variations ~50% (Hearty et al 2007) (AIRS data)

  16. What does our planet look like from space? • Polarization variations 10%-40% (Stam et al 2004) => Starlight is NOT polarized

  17. What does our planet look like from space? • Polarization variations 10%-40% (Stam et al 2004) => Starlight is NOT polarized

  18. A Concept for TPF Prep Science from the Moon (STScI’s NASA “LSSO” Proposal) See also: Traub et al. “REFLECT” poster PI: Margaret Turnbull, STScI

  19. The ALIVE Idea: Characterize Terrestrial Change. Do photometry, spectroscopy, and polarimetry of the Earth on an hourly basis for as long as possible in optical and near-IR wavelengths (possibly UV and thermal IR as well). -Small telescope, Astronaut deployable -Autonomously functioning after that -Study change due to rotation, phases, seasons...solar cycles??

  20. What does our planet look like from space? ALIVE baseline Extended Concept

  21. The ALIVE Idea: Use spatially resolved measurements in conjunction with models to find out: To what extent can we characterize unknown worlds, given a spatially unresolved signal?

  22. The ALIVE Instrument Concept

  23. ALIVE and Earth Science The modern environmental movement was born of the Apollo missions.

  24. ALIVE and Earth Science During “Full Earth”, what we lose in relevance to exoplanets we gain in relevance to geoclimatology. => Triana-like science!

  25. ALIVE and Earth Science “Hot spot” observations -spectral separation b/w ground + plants enhanced -probe canopy structure as the earth turns -vegetation abundance and health

  26. ALIVE and Earth Science Limb-to-limb cloudcover, albedo, and optical depth =>derive microphysics of clouds =>needed to constrain Earth’s albedo and thermal emission, critical for climate models

  27. ALIVE and Earth Science Obtain time- and space- resolved column measurements for greenhouse gases produced by natural and anthropogenic sources (CO2, CO, CH4)

  28. ALIVE and Earth Science Extension into the UV: Cloud transmittance and absorption, surface UV radiation, time- and space-resolved measurements of ozone, aerosols, NO2 => also critical to understanding Earth’s energy balance

  29. Cost/benefit trades to be investigated: -wavelength resolution reqs (R~250) -wavelength range (UV? thermal?) -spatial res reqs (~10km/100km) -power (RTGs? solar? batteries?) -location of deployment (poles?) -thermal control, dust mitigation -operations during lunar night? PI: Margaret Turnbull, STScI

  30. PI: Margaret Turnbull, STScI

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