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Pan-STARRS (PS1)
In January 2009, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) has finished its deployment with the Pan-STARRS Telescope No. 1 (PS1) at Haleakala Observatories, Maui, Hawaii. PS1 will be able to scan the visible sky to approximately 23rd magnitude in less than one week. This unique combination of sensitivity and field of view will open many new possibilities in time-domain astronomy and address a wide range of astrophysical problems in the Solar System, the Galaxy, and the Universe.
PS1 is a very powerful tool for scientific research in many areas of astronomy. The University of Hawaii has set up an international consortium comprised of astronomers from Germany, the USA the United Kingdom and Taiwan to operate and analyze the data from the telescope. The consortium has identified at least twelve key astronomy research projects to be completed during the anticipated 3.5-year life of PS1. They ojects to be studied cover the whole range from near-earth asteroids to very high redshift galaxies.
The members of the Science Consortium are:
* University of Hawaii, Institute for Astronomy
* Max Planck Society; institutes in Garching and in Heidelberg
* The Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
* Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
* Las Cumbres Observatory
* Durham University, Extragalactic Astronomy & Cosmology Research Group
* University of Edinburgh, Institute for Astronomy
* Queen's University Belfast, Astrophysics Research Center
* National Central University, Taiwan
Pan-STARRS is designed to be an advance to the next level in NEO survey work. This new system will have 3-16 times the collecting power of the current NEO survey telescopes and a massive array of state-of-the-art CCD detectors in the focal plane. They will enable the Pan-STARRS survey to reach about 5 magnitudes (a factor of 100) fainter objects than observed by current NEO surveys. Further, Pan-STARRS' large field of view (7 deg2 per exposure) is larger than that of any of the current NEO survey programs. This will allow us to observe the available sky faster and more frequently than any of the current programs. Finally, Pan-STARRS will have higher spatial resolution than the existing survey systems, allowing us to work in the parts of the sky where the ecliptic plane overlaps with the Milky Way, often too crowded with stars for the current surveys to observe effectively.
The Pan-STARRS system consists of more than just the telescope and CCD cameras. Backing up the observing equipment will be a powerful computing environment that will process the observations, calibrate the astrometric and photometric (position and brightness) properties of individual observations, and detect the "moving" objects such as asteroids, comets, and trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). The system will also track all objects already known (or discovered by itself), so that on future nights when an object is reobserved it can be rapidly identified and if necessary, its orbit updated to include the new data. There are currently about 100,000 known moving objects in our solar system that are tracked by professional astronomers. With Pan-STARRS, we estimate that we will catalog up to 10 million main-belt asteroids and tens of thousands of NEOs and TNOs.
By reaching objects 100 times fainter than those currently observed in the NEO surveys, Pan-STARRS should quickly help finish off the Congressional mandate to find and determine orbits for the 1-km (and larger) threatening NEOs. Further, we will be able to push the detection limit for a complete (99%) sample down to objects as small as 300 meters in diameter. Such objects, while not capable of wiping out life on Earth, would cause considerable local and/or regional damage should one collide with our planet.
Several previous search programs have discovered hundreds of thousands of main-belt asteroids, and have identified thousands of NEOs. They have made great progress toward meeting the Congressional mandate and have cataloged most, but not all, of the 1-km and larger NEOs -- the ones that are most likely to produce a global catastrophe, such as a mass extinction should they collide with Earth. Pan-STARRS will complete the survey of all 1-km diameter objects, and will detect most of the dangerous objects down to 300 meters in diameter -- objects that can cause major regional catastrophes should they hit the Earth.
Subaru-HSC (Hyper Suprime-Cam)
The Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) as a second generation instrument for Subaru telescope. This is a very wide-field camera covering 1.5 degrees of sky at a time. The focal plane area to be covered will be around 530mm. A total of 110 2k x 4k CCD detectors will be placed adjacent to each other in order to cover this large field of view. The HSC will be a prime focus camera, and will enlarge the current field of view (FOV) of Subaru, as provided by the first generation Suprime Cam, by a factor of 10. The HSC will be the largest CCD camera in the world, and will have a total performance, as measured by the product of the telescope aperture area and the field of view, which will exceed that of all other telescopes. Only the planned LSST will have a better performance, but that will be in a time frame of three or more years later than the HSC. Approximately 1000 square degrees will be surveyed every year. The HSC is planned to be finished by 2011-2012. The official partners of HSC now include NAOJ, University of Princeton and ASIAA(Taiwan). The three sides will work together on the HSC survey plan. Our Solar System science for investigating asteroids and comets is one of the main topic using HSC.
Taiwan Lulin 1-m and 2-m Telescope Observations for Solar System Small Bodies
1-m and 40-cm telescopes are now operating at the Lulin observatory in Taiwan. 2-m telescope will be established in the Lulin observatory by 2010-2011.
Meteor Observation
Re-entry capsule observation as an artificial meteor
- HAYABUSA re-entry capsule observation in 2010 June.
NASA Stardust Reentry Capsule Observing Campaign
Shinsuke Abe & Masayuki Yamamoto
Mike Taylor
ASIMA (Asteroid Impact Analyzer)
The Asteroid Impact Analyzer (AsImA) is a Partner Mission of Opportunity using a simple, small instrument package designed to spectroscopically measure how the bulk carbon-to-metal ratio varies among predictable meteor showers. The showers AsImA targets are uniquely traceable to specific parent comets, which in turn sample a variety of specific source reservoirs that stretch from the main asteroid belt, through the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt and Scattered Disk to the Oort Cloud. AsImA takes advantage of the Earth’s atmosphere as a “detector” to sample the diversity in composition of meteor parent bodies in a cost-effective, low-risk approach.
HAYABUSA Asteroidal Mission
HAYABUSA (MUSES-C) has been developed to investigate asteroids. HAYABUSA explored an asteroid named "Itokawa," after the late Dr. Hideo Itokawa, the father of Japan’s space development program. HAYABUSA is traveling through space using an ion engine. The purpose of the HAYABUSA mission is sample return from the Itokawa by traveling through space using an ion engine and arriving at the asteroid autonomously to acquire a material sample.
Until now, the only extra-terrestrial celestial body from which we have gathered samples is the Moon. But since the matter that comprises large bodies such as the planets and the Moon has changed over time due to thermal processes, these bodies cannot provide us with a pristine record of the solar system. Asteroids, on the other hand, are believed to be small enough to have preserved the state of the early solar system and are sometimes referred to as celestial fossils. A soil sample from an asteroid can give us clues about the raw materials that made up planets and asteroids in their formative years, and about the state of the inside of a solar nebula around the time of the birth of the planets. However small the sample amount may be, its scientific significance is tremendous.
HAYABUSA, which was launched on May 9, 2003,achieved its goal of arriving at the Itokawa asteroid and performing scientific observations. As a result, its mission was featured in the scientific magazine "Science" as a first Japanese mission to illustrate various new findings about the asteroid including its gravity and surface conditions. HAYABUSA is now under preparations for its return trip to the Earth in 2010
Marco-Polo Asteroidal Mission
JAXA is considering the further advanced mission for sample-return from primitive bodies, following asteroid probes Hayabusa and Hayabusa-2. This concept was formerly named "post-Hayabusa" in the working group established in 2004, and after proposal of the tentative concept "Hayabusa-2" as the clone spacecraft of Hayabusa, it was renamed as "Hayabusa Mk2" meaning the whole new model. This study aroused interest of European scientists and engineers, promoting a collaborative mission between Japan and Europe since 2007. The collaborative mission was named "Marco Polo", and proposed as a mid-size mission to apply for "Cosmic Vision", a space science program by ESA. It passed the primary selection along with another seven missions out of 50 submissions, and cooperative assessment by Japan and Europe has been ongoing since 2008.
Marco Polo is planning to explore a primitive body retaining more pristine information than Itokawa or 1999JU3, the target of Hayabusa-2, and to try sample-return of its surface materials, and if possible, underground materials. We may gain the oldest materials in the solar system, never found on the Earth.
