Daniel Apai's Blog on Exoplanet Exploration and Astrobiology
An incredible 24 hours! After a picture-perfect launch, Pandora is now in orbit, with solar panels deployed and alive (receiving commands from ground! After seven years of working on this project, it is so rewarding to see an idea become an actual NASA space telescope, pushing the frontiers of our knowledge. The launch from the…
What an exciting Saturday!! After months of lab upgrades, our Moore Nanotechnology Systems GPM170 glass-pressing machine is certified and running perfectly! This machine provides excellent, 0.1K temperature stability (our previous machine had 40K temperature swings!). It is also completes a cycle 3x faster, molding a lens in less than an hour! We are getting much…
Read my article on The Conversation about the scientific context, importance, and complexity of the announcement that a potential signature of life was found in a transit spectrum of the planet K2-18b. What does it mean? What are the next steps? https://theconversation.com/scientists-found-a-potential-sign-of-life-on-a-distant-planet-an-astronomer-explains-why-many-are-still-skeptical-254900
With Pandora swiftly moving closer to launch, Mission Operation Center lead Karl Harshman and I (as Uof A PI, and Lead of the Pandora Exoplanets Science Working Group) spoke with KOLD13 news about the mission’s science goals.
NASA selected SpaceX as launch provider for our Pandora Exoplanet Space Telescope. Pandora will look at 20 particularly exciting exoplanets and their host stars. The University of Arizona will provide Mission Operations and I lead the Pandora Exoplanets Working Group. Look out for more news as we approach T-0! Visit the Pandora Mission site to…
The Explorers Club is a famed group of explorers who have led scientific expeditions all over our planet – and beyond – for over a century. I recall reading – as a teenager – inspiring stories in the National Geographic about expeditions conducted by The Explorers Club. Given the long-standing excellence of TEC in scientific expeditions and advancing human…
The AAS Nova featured a nice article by Lexi Gault on our new paper in which Fuda Nguyen and I propose that the polar regions of brown dwarfs (and most gas giant exoplanets) are different from the equatorial and mid-latitude regions: The poles are in a different circulation regime (vortex-dominated) – this means that they have different…
Just completed a wonderful trip to D.C. to the AAAS Fellows Forum and a visit to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. I was honored to be elected a AAAS Fellow and enjoyed participating in the Fellows Forum, celebrating the new Fellows at the 150th Anniversary of the program. It was thrilling to share this honor…
Our exciting new results on TESS observations of the atmospheric dynamics of the closest brown dwarfs are out! Here is a link to the Astrophysical Journal paper that describes the findings. Thanks to Mimmo Nardiello’s mastery of the TESS data, we could present an amazing rich lightcurve on the closest brown dwarf system to the…
The American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics‘ ASCEND2020 event was an exciting amalgam of governmental groups, entrepreneurs, academia, aerospace corporations, and everyone interested in Space 2.0 and the new economic opportunities it may bring along. With over 3,000 attendees from 32 countries and 1,300 organizations, it has been a fascinating event to attend. I was…