SPACE: the SPectroscopic All-sky Cosmic Explorer
Abstract
We describe the scientific motivations, the mission concept and the instrumentation of SPACE, a class-M mission proposed for concept study at the first call of the ESA Cosmic-Vision 2015-2025 planning cycle. SPACE aims to produce the largest three-dimensional evolutionary map of the Universe over the past 10 billion years by taking near-IR spectra and measuring redshifts for more than half a billion galaxies at 0<z<2 down to AB~23 over 3\pi sr of the sky. In addition, SPACE will also target a smaller sky field, performing a deep spectroscopic survey of millions of galaxies to AB~26 and at 2<z<10+. These goals are unreachable with ground-based observations due to the ~500 times higher sky background. To achieve the main science objectives, SPACE will use a 1.5m diameter Ritchey-Chretien telescope equipped with a set of arrays of Digital Micro-mirror Devices (DMDs) covering a total field of view of 0.4 deg2, and will perform large-multiplexing multi-object spectroscopy (e.g. ~6000 targets per pointing) at a spectral resolution of R~400 as well as diffraction-limited imaging with continuous coverage from 0.8mum to 1.8mum.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0804.4433,
title = {SPACE: the SPectroscopic All-sky Cosmic Explorer},
author = {A. Cimatti and M. Robberto and C. M. Baugh and S. V. W. Beckwith and R. Content and E. Daddi and G. De Lucia and B. Garilli and L. Guzzo and G. Kauffmann and M. Lehnert and D. Maccagni and A. Martinez-Sansigre and F. Pasian and I. N. Reid and P. Rosati and R. Salvaterra and M. Stiavelli and Y. Wang and M. Zapatero Osorio and the SPACE team},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0804.4433},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
27 pages, Experimental Astronomy, in press. The SPACE team complete list is available at http://urania.bo.astro.it/cimatti/space . The article with full resolution figures is available at http://urania.bo.astro.it/cimatti/space/publications.htm