Breakthrough capability for the NASA Astrophysics Explorer Program: Reaching the darkest sky

摘要

We describe a mission architecture designed to substantially increase thescience capability of the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) AstrophysicsExplorer Program for all AO proposers working within the near-UV tofar-infrared spectrum. We have demonstrated that augmentation of Falcon 9Explorer launch services with a 13 kW Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) stage candeliver a 700 kg science observatory payload to extra-Zodiacal orbit. This newcapability enables up to ~13X increased photometric sensitivity and ~160Xincreased observing speed relative to a Sun-Earth L2, Earth-trailing, or Earthorbit with no increase in telescope aperture. All enabling SEP stagetechnologies for this launch service augmentation have reached sufficientreadiness (TRL-6) for Explorer Program application in conjunction with theFalcon 9. We demonstrate that enabling Astrophysics Explorers to reachextra-zodiacal orbit will allow this small payload program to rival the scienceperformance of much larger long development time systems; thus, providing ameans to realize major science objectives while increasing the SMD Astrophysicsportfolio diversity and resiliency to external budget pressure. The SEPtechnology employed in this study has strong applicability to SMD PlanetaryScience community-proposed missions. SEP is a stated flight demonstrationpriority for NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist (OCT). This new missionarchitecture for astrophysics Explorers enables an attractive realization ofjoint goals for OCT and SMD with wide applicability across SMD sciencedisciplines.