The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor reports the first space mission led by the U-M Department of Astronomy is scheduled to launch in 2029 with the support of a NASA grant worth $10 million.
The mission, called STARI — STarlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry — will showcase the viability of a new technique for studying exoplanets, or planets outside of our solar system.
The technique could be used in the future to better understand whether any of the exoplanets known to humankind are capable of supporting life as we know it.
“We’ve detected thousands of these planets, and most by indirect means — in other words, not directly through the light they emit,” says John Monnier, U-M professor of astronomy and leader of the project. “It’s time to change that.”
The grant was awarded by the Astrophysics Research and Analysis program of NASA’s Astrophysics Division.
STARI itself isn’t designed to show new things about those planets. Rather, it will demonstrate a crucial technology for a powerful technique called interferometry to prove that larger, more expensive future missions can use this approach to look for signs of life on other planets.
Interferometry requires multiple satellites, separated by hundreds of yards, maneuvering in precise coordination to bounce starlight between each other. The satellites need to transmit light to each other with pinpoint accuracy while moving and being separated by roughly the length of a football field.
It’s this level of control and stability that STARI intends to demonstrate using two small satellites called CubeSats. Both of STARI’s satellites, named STARI-1 and STARI-2, are about the size of a briefcase.
“The most challenging aspect of the STARI mission will be achieving the precise coordination and control required for formation flying on a CubeSat platform,” says Gautam Vasisht, a collaborator on the project and a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL.
The advantage of using CubeSats is that they cost a small fraction of what it would take to get a larger mission off the ground. Although they can’t completely match the performance of bigger, more sophisticated satellites, CubeSats offer a lower cost way to prove components of the technology needed for those larger missions.
“By testing formation flying technologies on a CubeSat platform, STARI paves the way for future missions that could revolutionize our ability to study distant Earth-like planets,” Gautam says. “It’s a demonstration of how innovative engineering and a strong collaboration can push the boundaries of what’s possible in astronomy.”
In addition to Vasisht of JPL, the team is joined by experts from across the country, led by Simone D’Amico at Stanford University, E. Glenn Lightsey at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Leonid Pogorelyuk at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, or RPI.
James Cutler, a professor of aerospace engineering who also spearheads the CubeSats Working Group in the U-M Space Institute, is also a co-investigator.
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