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"You take a million, billion tonnes of flaming inferno and turn it into 'twinkle, twinkle little star' ..."

Sun, 21 Oct 2007

Whither Darwin/ Terrestrial Planet Finder ?

I see from the BBC and /. that ESA has made its choices in Cosmic Vision 2015-2025. It appears that Darwin did not make the cut.

Istead, PLATO and SPICA seem to be holding the banner for exoplanetary exploration.

Can someone closer to the decision-making process comment? What does this mean for NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder? There were considerations of merging Darwin and TPF; does the project live as TPF, or was the task of imaging an exoplanet left to JWST ?

The TPF mission proposals (coronagraph, occulter, interferometer) are still alive and well, as proposals, but not yet as missions.  NASA and ESA both advocate technical development in these areas.  The decision to start planning and construction on a mission may require three things to happen first: ESA's Cosmic Vision process completes at least the first phases of industry study of the current list, perhaps in 2008; NASA-NSF's ExoPlanet Task Force issues its written report in several months, although both the TPF Coronagraph and Interferometer have been praised by this committee as being necessary for characterizing exoplanets; and the NRC's Decadal Survey committee reviews all the options and makes recommendations to NASA and the NSF, around late 2010.

Posted by Wesley Traub at Tue Oct 23 21:42:31 2007

Thanks for this. its good to see the all the work in Darwin/TPF not being lost in limbo.

The demotion of Darwin on ESAs website is practically Stalinist. I understand the PR need to push more active projects, and that such projects are not really dead, but rather told to "come back when you've progressed a bit further", but its disheartening for someone coming into the field to see such missions disappear from view.

Posted by Alastair McKinstry at Wed Oct 24 09:39:30 2007

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