NASA ExoPAG Study Analysis Group 11: Preparing for the WFIRST Microlensing Survey
Abstract
NASA's proposed WFIRST-AFTA mission will discover thousands of exoplanets with separations from the habitable zone out to unbound planets, using the technique of gravitational microlensing. The Study Analysis Group 11 of the NASA Exoplanet Program Analysis Group was convened to explore scientific programs that can be undertaken now, and in the years leading up to WFIRST's launch, in order to maximize the mission's scientific return and to reduce technical and scientific risk. This report presents those findings, which include suggested precursor Hubble Space Telescope observations, a ground-based, NIR microlensing survey, and other programs to develop and deepen community scientific expertise prior to the mission.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1409.2759,
title = {NASA ExoPAG Study Analysis Group 11: Preparing for the WFIRST Microlensing Survey},
author = {Jennifer C. Yee and Michael Albrow and Richard K. Barry and David Bennett and Geoff Bryden and Sun-Ju Chung and B. Scott Gaudi and Neil Gehrels and Andrew Gould and Matthew T. Penny and Nicholas Rattenbury and Yoon-Hyun Ryu and Jan Skowron and Rachel Street and Takahiro Sumi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.2759},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
35 pages, 5 Figures. A brief overview of the findings is presented in the Executive Summary (2 pages)