Quick Technical Facts

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Technical Readiness

SIM Technology is Complete:

• Ten-year technology program, including eight NASA HQ specified technology gates, are all complete, satisfying all NASA HQ technology requirements for SIM Implementation Phase (Phase C/D) entry.
• Technology completion/readiness confirmed by multiple external independent reviews.
• Click here for a list of technology milestones completed.

SIM Science is Compelling and Uncompromised:

• SIM represents an entirely new measurement capability in astronomy and a revolution in astrometry that will exceed all previous measurements by a factor of 100-1,000. For faint stars, SIM's capability will exceed that of upcoming missions such as Gaia by a factor of 25-75 or more.
• SIM science program endorsed by two NRC Decadal committees (Bahcall-1991; McKee/Taylor 2001). Reaffirmed by CAA in 2002 and praised for its dual capability in astrophysics and planet finding. Astrometric performance exceeds, by more than a factor of 2, the objectives established by the NRC/CAA.
• SIM Science Team & Key Projects selected by peer-review in 2000. These remain relevant today can only be accomplished by SIM-PlanetQuest.
• Half of SIM observing time remains to be allocated via future solicitation/competition.
• Importance in definitively measuring planet masses & orbits is not diminished by advances elsewhere. Modeling and inference are not substitutes for actually measuring the most fundamental property of any astronomical body: its mass.
• SIM has the capability to detect large numbers of rocky planets around nearby stars.
• In a survey of the best 120 candidate stars for hosting such planets in the 'habitable zone,' SIM would have the sensitivity to survey:
• 65 stars for planets down to Earth mass, in scaled 1 AU orbits, OR
• 149 stars for planets down to two Earth masses, in scaled 1 AU orbits, OR
• 239 stars for planets down to three Earth masses, in scaled 1 AU orbits.
• The choice among these three options depends on on Eta_earth, the fraction of stars carrying Earth-analog planets. It will be estimated by the Kepler mission some time before SIM Lite launches.
• Kepler and SIM complement one another.
• SIM studies nearby exoplanetary systems, while Kepler studies a large sample of distant stars to obtain a statistical sample of exoplanetary systems that are too distant for follow-up characterization.
• GAIA and SIM complement one another.
• SIM excels at studying bright and faint sources to high accuracy, while GAIA will obtain astrometric measurements of a large number of relatively bright stars.