Jun 19 2009
From The Space Library
NASA announced the selection of two scientific proposals to study the Sun and other exotic objects in the universe, such as neutron stars and black holes. NASA would develop the proposals into full missions, as part of its Small Explorer (SMEX) program. The winning proposals were the Interface Region Imaging Spectrography (IRIS) and the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism (GEMS). With Alan M. Title of Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, California, as Principal Investigator, the IRIS mission would use a solar telescope and spectrograph to explore the solar chromosphere, a region crucial in the quest to understand energy transport into the solar wind. NASA expected the mission greatly to extend the scientific output of existing heliophysics spacecraft. Jean H. Swank of NASA’s GSFC in Greenbelt, Maryland, would serve as Principal Investigator of the GEMS mission, designed to study the bending of space and curving of light in regions of extreme gravity—near objects such as ultra- dense neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes—and to detect and measure the polarization of the x rays that such objects emit. NASA planned for to launch both projects by 2015, with mission costs capped at US$105 million each, excluding the launch vehicles.
NASA, “NASA Awards Two Small Explorer Development Contracts,” news release 09-141, 19 June 2009, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/jun/HQ_09-141_SMEX_Selections.html (accessed 22 July 2011).
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