TWINKLE: a low earth orbit visible and infrared exoplanet spectroscopy observatory

Savini, G.; Tessenyi, Marcell; Tinetti, Giovanna; Arena, C.; Tennyson, Jonathan; Zingalès, Tiziano; Pascale, E.; Sudiwala, R.; Παπαγεωργίου, Ανδρέας; Sarkar, Subhajit; Griffin, Matt; Barnes, Keith; Hipwood, L. G.; Knowles, Peter J.; Patel, Manish R.; Leese, M. R.; Mason, Jon; Crook, M.; Tosh, Ian; Saad, A.; Eccleston, Paul; Shaughnessy, Bryan; Brooke, T. Y.; Wells, Martyn; Bryson, Ian; Macleod, Alastair; Taylor, W. D.; Bezawada, Naidu; Wright, Gillian; Jason, Susan; Friend, Jonathan; Williams, James M.; Johnston, Gordon I.; Prasad, Sant; Vora, Amar; Saunders, Chris; Winter, B.; Curry, Patrick; Smith, A. J.

doi:10.1117/12.2233691

Cited by 9 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Here we take the Twinkle design as discussed in [51], [31], and [70]. Twinkle is currently entering a Phase B design review and thus the technical specifications may change.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exoplanet spectroscopy and photometry with the Twinkle space telescope

et al. 2018

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The Twinkle space telescope has been designed for the characterisation of exoplanets and Solar System objects. Operating in a low Earth, Sunsynchronous orbit, Twinkle is equipped with a 45 cm telescope and visible (0.4 -1µm) and infrared (1.3 -4.5µm) spectrometers which can be operated simultaneously. Twinkle is a general observatory which will provide on-demand observations of a wide variety of targets within wavelength ranges that are currently not accessible using other space telescopes or accessible only to oversubscribed observatories in the short-term future.Here we explore the ability of Twinkle's spectrometers to characterise the currently-known exoplanets. We study the spectral resolution achievable by combining multiple observations for various planetary and stellar types. We also simulate spectral retrievals for some well-known planets (HD 209458 b, GJ 3470 b and 55 Cnc e).From the exoplanets known today, we find that with a single transit or eclipse, Twinkle could probe 89 planets at low spectral resolution (R <20) as well as 12 planets at higher resolution (R >20) in channel 1 (1.3 -4.5µm). With 10 observations, the atmospheres of 144 planets could be characterised with R <20 and 81 at higher resolutions.Upcoming surveys will reveal thousands of new exoplanets, many of which will be located within Twinkle's field of regard. TESS in particular 1 arXiv:1811.08348v2 [astro-ph.EP]

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“…Here we take the Twinkle design as discussed in [51], [31], and [70]. Twinkle is currently entering a Phase B design review and thus the technical specifications may change.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Twinkle is equipped with a visible (0.4 -1µm) and infrared (1.3 -4.5µm) spectrometer (split into two channels at 2.42µm). Twinkle has been designed with a telescope aperture of 45cm and will operate in a low Earth, Sun-synchronous orbit [51,31].…”

Section: Twinklementioning

confidence: 99%

Exoplanet spectroscopy and photometry with the Twinkle space telescope

et al. 2018

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“…The qualification criteria for the design would be 18.3g Grms. The common practice for an optomechanical vibration engineering was to assume the structure damage is done by 3-sigma acceleration [3], [5], [6], [11], [12], [14].…”

Section: (2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanical Design and Analysis of Detector Head Assembly for Space bone High-Resolution Imaging Sensor

Patel,

Shah*

2020

IJITEE

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The imaging sensors employed in satellites are subjected to a wide range of vibratory loads induced during the launching phase. The effect of temperature change also needs to be looked upon while designing the structure of the imaging sensor as satellite passes through the solar and lunar phase. This project work goes into depth of challenges incurred during launching and in-orbit operation. The research includes development of lightweight structure, incorporating flexure interface to house detector head assembly (DHA) components. The design of flexural mount is a novel approach that not only arrests the deformation of the imaging sensor but also restricts structural stresses to affect the performance of the imaging sensor. This article showcases the assessment of three different mechanical designs of DHA through finite element simulation results computed in ANSYS workbench environment. The survivability of DHA structure has been checked under 55g quasi-static loading to simulate launch vibration along with 10°C thermal gradient corresponded to the in-service orbital motion. In this research work, AL6061-T6 and Kovar has been chosen for various design components of the DHA as they are space qualified materials. Though both material options showed similar performance, due to low density, ready availability and cost effectiveness leads to select Al6061-T6 material for the fabrication of DHA components.

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“…Changes to the firmware code within the electronics will optimize the operations (e.g., CCD readout modes) and integration times for the Twinkle application. 48 This instrument is referred to as channel 0 (Ch0). For the phase A study, an e2v CCD-230-42 detector was assumed for the visible channel, but this is currently under further discussion.…”

Section: Twinklementioning

confidence: 99%

Small bodies science with the Twinkle space telescope

Edwards¹,

Lindsay²,

Savini³

et al. 2019

J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst.

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Twinkle is an upcoming 0.45-m space-based telescope equipped with a visible and two near-infrared spectrometers covering the spectral range 0.4 to 4.5 μm with a resolving power R ∼ 250 (λ < 2.42 μm) and R ∼ 60 (λ > 2.42 μm). We explore Twinkle's capabilities for small bodies science and find that, given Twinkle's sensitivity, pointing stability, and spectral range, the mission can observe a large number of small bodies. The sensitivity of Twinkle is calculated and compared to the flux from an object of a given visible magnitude. The number, and brightness, of asteroids and comets that enter Twinkle's field of regard is studied over three time periods of up to a decade. We find that, over a decade, several thousand asteroids enter Twinkle's field of regard with a brightness and nonsidereal rate that will allow Twinkle to characterize them at the instrumentation's native resolution with SNR > 100. Hundreds of comets can also be observed. Therefore, Twinkle offers researchers the opportunity to contribute significantly to the field of Solar System small bodies research.

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TWINKLE: a low earth orbit visible and infrared exoplanet spectroscopy observatory

Cited by 9 publications

References 4 publications

Exoplanet spectroscopy and photometry with the Twinkle space telescope

Exoplanet spectroscopy and photometry with the Twinkle space telescope

Mechanical Design and Analysis of Detector Head Assembly for Space bone High-Resolution Imaging Sensor

Small bodies science with the Twinkle space telescope

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