High precision astrometry mission for the detection and characterization of nearby habitable planetary systems with the Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope (NEAT)
Creators: name: Malbet, Fabien
name: Léger, Alain
name: Shao, Michael
name: Goullioud, Renaud
name: Lagage, Pierre-Olivier
name: Brown, Anthony G. A.
name: Cara, Christophe
name: Durand, Gilles
name: Eiroa, Carlos
name: Feautrier, Philippe
name: Jakobsson, Björn
name: Hinglais, Emmanuel
name: Kaltenegger, Lisa
name: Labadie, Lucas
name: Lagrange, Anne-Marie
name: Laskar, Jacques
name: Liseau, René
name: Lunine, Jonathan
name: Maldonado, Jesús
name: Mercier, Manuel
name: Mordasini, Christoph
name: Queloz, Didier
name: Quirrenbach, Andreas
name: Sozzetti, Alessandro
name: Traub, Wesley
name: Absil, Olivier
name: Alibert, Yann
name: Andrei, Alexandre Humberto
name: Arenou, Frédéric
name: Beichman, Charles
name: Chelli, Alain
name: Cockell, Charles S.
name: Duvert, Gilles
name: Forveille, Thierry
name: Garcia, Paulo J. V.
name: Hobbs, David
name: Krone-Martins, Alberto
name: Lammer, Helmut
name: Meunier, Nadège
name: Minardi, Stefano
name: de Almeida, André Moitinho
name: Rambaux, Nicolas
name: Raymond, Sean
name: Röttgering, Huub J. A.
name: Sahlmann, Johannes
name: Schuller, Peter A.
name: Ségransan, Damien
name: Selsis, Franck
name: Surdej, Jean
name: Villaver, Eva
name: White, Glenn J.
name: Zinnecker, Hans
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: (abridged) A complete census of planetary systems around a volume-limited sample of solar-type stars (FGK dwarfs) in the Solar neighborhood with uniform sensitivity down to Earth-mass planets within their Habitable Zones out to several AUs would be a major milestone in extrasolar planets astrophysics. This fundamental goal can be achieved with a mission concept such as NEAT - the Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope. NEAT is designed to carry out space-borne extremely-high-precision astrometric measurements sufficient to detect dynamical effects due to orbiting planets of mass even lower than Earth's around the nearest stars. Such a survey mission would provide the actual planetary masses and the full orbital geometry for all the components of the detected planetary systems down to the Earth-mass limit. The NEAT performance limits can be achieved by carrying out differential astrometry between the targets and a set of suitable reference stars in the field. The NEAT instrument design consists of an off-axis parabola single-mirror telescope, a detector with a large field of view made of small movable CCDs located around a fixed central CCD, and an interferometric calibration system originating from metrology fibers located at the primary mirror. The proposed mission architecture relies on the use of two satellites operating at L2 for 5 years, flying in formation and offering a capability of more than 20,000 reconfigurations (alternative option uses deployable boom). The NEAT primary science program will encompass an astrometric survey of our 200 closest F-, G- and K-type stellar neighbors, with an average of 50 visits. The remaining time might be allocated to improve the characterization of the architecture of selected planetary systems around nearby targets of specific interest (low-mass stars, young stars, etc.) discovered by Gaia, ground-based high-precision radial-velocity surveys.
description: Accepted for publication in Experimental Astronomy. The full member list of the NEAT proposal and the news about the project are available at http://neat.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr. The final publication is available at http://www.springerlink.com