NASA SPARCS Mission with Evgenya Shkolnik | On Things to Come

Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat 
  

Speaker: Evgenya Shkolnik (Arizona State University, USA)
 
Wednesday, 16 June 2021 
10 am GMT+8


Watch it live on BigMarker
 
or
Watch it live on Bilibili here!
 

 

 

There are about seventy-five billion terrestrial planets in our one Milky Way galaxy with temperatures capable of supporting surface life. The vast majority of these orbit low-mass stars which are known to be strong ultraviolet (UV) emitters with frequent and energetic flares. Knowing the UV environments of planets of all sizes is crucial to understanding their atmosphericcomposition and evolution. Characterization of the UV environment can provide a key parameter in a planet’s potential to be habitable and helps us to discriminate between biological and abiotic sources for observed biosignatures, gases we hope will be signs of life.  

Prof. Shkolnik will present NASA’s SPARCS (Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat) mission, which will be the first mission to provide the time dependent spectral slope, intensity, and evolution of UV radiation of low-mass stars including the strongest and rarest flares. As demonstrated by planet atmosphere models, these measurements are crucial to interpreting observations of planetary atmospheres around low mass stars. For this we must extend our UV time-domain knowledge from a timescale of half a day to months. A dedicated monitoring experiment, such as SPARCS, is the only way this is achievable.

SPARCS will be a 6U CubeSat devoted to monitoring 20 low-mass stars in two UV bands: SPARCS far-UV (S-FUV: 153–171 nm) and SPARCS near-UV (S-NUV: 260–300 nm). For each target, SPARCS will observe continuously between one and three complete stellar rotations (5–30 days) over a mission lifetime of one year. SPARCS will also achieve the technology demonstration of JPL-developed UV `2D-doped' (i.e., delta- and superlattice-doped) detectors and detector-integrated metal dielectric filters (MDF) in an operational environment. 




About Evgenya Shkolnik



Evgenya Shkolnik is an associate director of the Interplanetary Initiative and an associate professor of astrophysics at Arizona State University in the School of Earth and Space Exploration. She is an expert on exoplanets and stars, including the Sun. She uses telescopes both on the ground and in space to answer questions involving stellar evolution, exoplanet magnetic fields, and planet habitability.
She is the principal investigator (PI) of the NASA SPARCS CubeSat mission, the PI of UV-SCOPE, a NASA Mid-Ex mission concept, and the PI of the Hubble Space Telescope’s HAZMAT (Habitable Zones and M dwarf Activity across Time) program. Dr. Shkolnik is also a member of NASA Astrobiology Institute’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory, and several Science & Technology Advisory Committees for NASA’s upcoming space missions, as well as a panelist for the Astro2020 Decadal Survey. 
 

 
Schedule

23 September 2020
4 pm (GMT+8)
Geraint Jones – ESA Comet Interceptor Mission [YouTube/Youku]
21 October 2020 
8 pm (GMT+8)
Ralph Lorenz – NASA Dragonfly Mission [YouTube/Youku]
4 November 2020
4 pm (GMT+8)
Wang Chi – ESA SMILE Mission [YouTube/Youku]
25 November 2020
4 pm (GMT+8)
Heike Rauer – ESA PLATO Mission [YouTube/Youku]
9 December 2020
4 pm (GMT+8)
Takehiko Satoh – JAXA Akatsuki Mission [YouTube/Bilibili]
18 December 2020
4 pm (GMT+8)
Olivier Witasse – ESA JUICE Mission [YouTube/Bilibili]
21 December 2020
4 pm (GMT+8)
Tomohiro Usui – JAXA MMX Mission [YouTube/Bilibili]
13 January 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Weiqun Gan – CAS ASO-S Mission [YouTube/Bilibili] 
27 January 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Giovanna Tinetti – ESA Ariel Mission [YouTube/Bilibili] 
24 February 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Johannes Benkhoff – ESA BepiColombo Mission I [YouTube/Bilibili] 
10 March 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Gabriele Cremonese – ESA BepiColombo Mission II  [YouTube/Bilibili] 
24 March 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Go Murakami – ESA BepiColombo Mission III [YouTube/Bilibili] 
7 April 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Yoshifumi Saito – ESA BepiColombo Mission IV [YouTube/Bilibili] 
14 April 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Daniel Mueller – ESA Solar Orbiter Mission I [YouTube/Bilibili] 
21 April 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Stefano Vitale – ESA LISA Mission [YouTube/Bilibili] 
6 May 2021
9 am (GMT+8)
Andy Cheng – NASA DART Mission [YouTube/Bilibili] 
12 May 2021
9 am (GMT+8)
Robert Pappalardo – NASA Europa Clipper [YouTube/Bilibili] 
19 May 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Saem Krucker – ESA Solar Orbiter Mission II Watch
25 May 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Sami Solanki – ESA Solar Orbiter Mission III Watch
2 June 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Athena Coustenis – ESA's ExoMars Missions Watch
9 June 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Yuan Weimin – CAS Einstein Probe Mission Attend
16 June 2021
10 am (GMT+8)
Evgenya Shkolnik – NASA SPARCS Mission
30 June 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
René Laurelijs – ESA EUCLID Mission
7 July 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
ZHAN Hu – CMS Chinese Space Station Telescope
14 July 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Tomoko Arai – JAXA DESTINY+ Mission
21 July 2021
4 pm (GMT+8)
Micheal Küppers – ESA HERA Mission
25 August 2021
4 pm (GMT+8) 
HE Huaiyu – CAS Chang'e 5 Mission
1 September 2021
4 pm (GMT+8) 
ZHANG Shuangnan – CAS HXMT Mission
9 Sept. 2021
10 am (GMT+8)
Lindy Elkins-Tanton – NASA Psyche Mission
15 Sept. 2021
4 pm (GMT+8) 
LIN Honglei – CAS Tianwen-1 
22 Sept. 2021
9 am (GMT+8)
Hal Levison – NASA Lucy Mission
29 Sept. 2021
9 am (GMT+8)
Ralph McNutt – NASA Interstellar Probe

 

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