Open Access<title>Explorer-class astrobiology mission</title>
Author(s) -
Scott A. Sandford,
Thomas P. Greene,
L. J. Allamandola,
R. D. Arno,
J. D. Bregman,
Sylvia Cox,
P. K. Davis,
Andrew Gonzalez,
Michael R. Haas,
Robert Hanel,
Michael Hines,
Daniel Hudgins,
R.W. Jackson,
Peter Kittel,
David Lozier,
Scott S. Maa,
Craig R. McCreight
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
proceedings of spie, the international society for optical engineering/proceedings of spie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Conference proceedings
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.192
H-Index - 176
eISSN - 1996-756X
pISSN - 0277-786X
DOI - 10.1117/12.393974
Subject(s) - physics , observatory , astrobiology , detector , orbit (dynamics) , class (philosophy) , astronomy , optics , computer science , aerospace engineering , artificial intelligence , engineering
In this paper we describe a potential new Explorer-class space mission, the AstroBiology Explorer (ABE), consisting of a relatively modest dedicated space observatory having a 50 cm aperture primary mirror which is passively cooled to T < 65 K, resides in a low-background orbit (heliocenter orbit at 1 AU, Earth drift-away), and is equipped with a suite of three moderate resolution spectrographs equipped with first-order cross-dispersers and large format (1024 X 1024 pixel) near- and mid-IR detector arrays cooled by a modest amount of cryogen.
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