221th AAS
January 5-10, 2013Long Beach, California
AAS Science Program
Splinter Meeting:
Tuesday, 8 Jan 20137:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Room 101A
Long Beach Convention Center
WFIRST Mission and NRO Telescope - Neil Gehrels (NASA's GSFC)
The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is the top-ranked large space mission from the Astro2010 Decadal Survey. NASA is conducting a formulation phase study of design reference missions that would address essential questions in the areas of exoplanets, dark energy and infrared astrophysics.
WFIRST will survey thousands of square degrees to AB~27 and make precision measurements of hundreds of millions of galaxies. A census will be performed of thousands of exoplanets from habitable Earth-mass planets to free floaters. An optional coronagraph will provide direct imaging of Jupiter-mass planets and debris disks. A Guest Observer program will offer community science for broad areas of science including cosmology, galaxy formation, stellar population surveys and solar system studies.
NASA has recently been given two "Hubble class" 2.4m telescopes. This splinter meeting will explore options for using one of these telescopes for WFIRST. An update on in-progress studies by the WFIRST Science Definition Team (SDT) and Project office will be presented by SDT co-chairs David Spergel and Neil Gehrels and the possibility of adding an exoplanet coronagraph instrument will be discussed.
Come join in the fun at this WFIRST Splinter Session!
