How a Tiny Satellite Could Find Another Earth

Time Magazine carry a report on the work of radio amateur Sara Seager KB1WTW who is developing a CubeSat called ExoplanetSat, that will search for new planets.

Time report that unlike the massive and expensive Kepler probe used by NASA the ExoplanetSat is a tiny satellite, just 10x10x30cm.

They say:
"What makes ExoplanetSat even more un-NASA-like is that it began as a class project — although admittedly, the class was at MIT. It was a design-and-build course, which the university’s engineering students have to take in order to graduate. In a recent semester, the class was co-taught by Sara Seager [KB1WTW] an astrophysicist who has done groundbreaking research studying how the atmospheres of planets orbiting distant stars might look like from earthly telescopes. Seager recruited five science undergrads to join her engineers, on the theory that out in the real world, they’d eventually have to work with engineers anyway."

The group lead by Sara KB1WTW is developing the prototype ExoplanetSat capable of monitoring a single, bright, sun-like star for two years.

Planned to launch late 2012 or 2013 it is hoped it will open the gates for ExoplanetSat interest and funding. Once the funding doors are opened, then the fleet of ExoplanetSats can be launched. The fleet may contain as many as a hundred of these small satellites, each focused on its own star.

Read the Times Magazine article at
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2114158,00.html

MIT paper on ExoplanetSat
http://dspace.mit.edu/openaccess-disseminate/1721.1/61644

Presentation Slides
http://mstl.atl.calpoly.edu/~bklofas/Presentations/
DevelopersWorkshop2011/5_Smith_ExoplanetSat.pdf

PlanetQuest
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/

- Southgate Amateur Radio News