Paper 13093-12
The Small NASA Optical Ultraviolet Telescope (SNOUT): a SmallSat mission concept to connect extreme UV stellar flare to exoplanetary atmospheres
16 June 2024 • 13:50 - 14:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G414/415, North - 4F
Abstract
What is the amount of ionizing energy incident on exoplanet atmospheres from their host stars? What is the relationship between white-light flares and this ionizing energy? These are key questions required to link our current archive of hundreds of stellar whitelight flares to the ionizing radiation released during them, and the ramifications of those flares on the survival of exoplanetary atmospheres, particularly for planets orbiting within the habitable zones of low-mass stars. The Small NASA Optical Ultraviolet Telescope (SNOUT) is a proposed Pioneers mission comprised of two co-pointing telescopes: one optimized for EUV wavelengths (comprised of three separate EUV segments) and one for visible wavelengths. SNOUT is designed to measure the quiescent extreme-UV (EUV) emission for 30 mow-mass stars (0.3 - 1 solar masses), covering a range of ages, in three EUV bandpasses. The combined instrument is housed in an ESPA-Grande spacecraft and will launch into low Earth orbit for a one-year baseline mission. SNOUT has a substantial educational and early-career mentoring component; early-career scientists and engineers comprise more than half of the team, including key leadership roles.
Presenter
Keri Hoadley
The Univ. of Iowa (United States)
Dr. Keri Hoadley is an Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa and a NASA Roman Technology Fellow. She is an expert in ultraviolet astronomy and instrumentation, having lead NASA suborbital missions like the Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph (CHESS) sounding rocket payload and the Faint Intergalactic Redshifted Emission Balloon (FIREBall-2) telescope. She is the Deputy PI for the SNOUT mission and PI of a NASA technology development effort to fabricate highly efficient reflection gratings for ultraviolet astrophysics applications and the CubeSat mission concept UVIA.