" F R I N G E S " S P A C E I N T E R F E R O M E T R Y M I S S I O N N E W S L E T T E R Number 35, March 31, 2006 CONTENTS 1. Editorial 2. Meeting of the AAS Division on Dynamical Astronomy - June 2006 3. SIM PlanetQuest mission status 4. SIM PlanetQuest budget and schedule 1. Editorial Thanks to all the patient readers waiting for another update on SIM PlanetQuest. And also for several requests gently inquiring what happened to the Newsletter. Well, the Project has been exceptionally busy the past few months, and that includes your Editor. But from feedback we've received, the readership still finds this informal Newsletter useful, so we will continue to release it and keep you informed about the Project and related news. 2. Meeting of the AAS Division on Dynamical Astronomy - June 2006 First, an important meeting for the astrometry community. Also, your Editor is chair of the Scientific Organizing Committee for this conference! The 2006 Meeting of the Division on Dynamical Astronomy will be held 25-29 June 2006 at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Please remind your colleagues that astronomers, astrophysicists, and planetary scientists having an interest in dynamical research will find the annual DDA Meeting a friendly, stimulating, and rewarding experience. The Meeting will feature invited review talks on a range of topics in dynamical astrophysics, contributed oral papers (with no parallel sessions), and poster papers that are displayed throughout the entire meeting. Some funding to subsidize travel expenses for students and postdocs will also be available. We hope you'll be able to attend. Stay on a day or two and take in the fabulous scenery in Nova Scotia! Complete details may be found online at: http://dda.harvard.edu/ Important Deadlines: Hotel Reservations: 12 May 2006 Abstracts: 19 May 2006 Registration: 19 May 2006 3. SIM PlanetQuest mission status It has been a very busy few months since the last Newsletter. We told you about the eight technology 'gates' that the project had to pass as a precondition for proceeding to 'Phase C/D' - the design and construction of the flight instrument. The successful completion of the SIM PlanetQuest technology program is one of the Project's great success stories! Results from all eight of these gates, including the supporting modeling and analysis, were reviewed and approved by two independent review boards. The Project is now in the midst of developing the instrument design, in preparation for the next major milestone, the Preliminary Design Review (PDR). In spite of what the review name suggests, the instrument and mission design are now quite mature, partly as a result of the very extended Phase A/B, which has been dictated mostly by the available budget from NASA. In the last Newsletter we described the SIM PlanetQuest redesign in 2005 that was approved by NASA HQ (and unanimously accepted by the Science Team). The redesigned SIM has almost the same astrometric accuracy as the older design, so its ability to accomplish the primary science of searching for planets is not affected. The primary optics are now smaller, which in turn will require longer integration times for faint targets; but the limiting magnitude, and the astrometric accuracy at that limit, are unaffected. High accuracy on faint targets is part of what makes SIM PlanetQuest's capability unique. It's also important to understand that the performance numbers carry very substantial 'margin' - this means that even if the flight instrument subsystems don't quite meet their individual design specs, we have high confidence of meeting the scientific performance. Of course, if the margin isn't used up, that translates directly into enhanced performance. 4. SIM PlanetQuest budget and schedule Some good news here, but also some bad news. One of the requirements placed on the Project by NASA HQ during the redesign was a cost cap, which covers the flight instrument development ('Phase C/D') and the launch vehicle. The good news is that SIM PlanetQuest's design and development plan meets the cost cap of $1.2B (in $FY05) or $1.37B (in 'real year' dollars). The Project takes this cost cap very seriously, and to that end it carries very substantial reserves against unexpected difficulties in constructing the flight system. By NASA standards, these margins (54% on the instrument itself, and 38% overall, including launch vehicle) are extraordinarily robust! This cost assumed a funding profile that allowed a launch in March 2011. All of the Project's technical progress and planning has, until very recently, been geared toward that launch date. And, unfortunately, some bad news: budget pressures and changed mission priorities have required NASA to reduce the funding for SIM PlanetQuest. The President's proposed NASA Budget for the next 5 years (FY07-11) shows a dramatic reduction in funds for SIM, compared to last year's plan. If this profile is followed, the launch date would slip by at least four years, to roughly mid-2015. It's important to note that this proposed slip is not related in any way to the mission redesign in 2005. Changes of this magnitude represent a huge challenge for Project management, not least in efficiently assigning engineers with the necessary skills and experience in a rapidly changing environment. We will endeavor to keep you informed of news on the schedule and budget as it becomes available. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Unwin, Editor stephen.unwin'at'jpl.nasa.gov You are subscribed to the list 'sim-announce'. To unsubscribe from this list, please go to the 'SIM Newsletter' link on the SIM web page, where you can also find back issues of the Newsletter: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/Navigator/library/sim_newsletter.cfm