PicSat - A nanosat for continuous photometric monitoring for the Bet Pic b transit window

Reaching sub-milimag photometric precision on Beta Pictoris with a nanosat: the PicSat mission
https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.07802

Quote :

PicSat is a nanosatellite currently being developed to observe the transit of the giant planet \b{eta} Pictoris, expected some time between July 2017 and June 2018. The mission is based on a Cubesat architecture, with a small but ambitious 2 kg opto-mechanical payload specifically designed for high precision photometry. The satellite will be launched in early 2017, probably on a 600 km Sun synchronous orbit. The main objective of the mission is the constant monitoring of the brightness of Pic at an unprecedented combination of reliability and precision (200 ppm per hour, with interruptions of at most 30 minutes) to finely characterize the transiting exoplanet and detect exocomets in the Pictoris system. To achieve this difficult objective, the payload is designed with a 3.5 cm effective aperture telescope which injects the light in a single-mode optical fiber linked to an avalanche photodioode. A two-axis piezoelectric actuation system, driven by a tailor-made feedback loop control algorithm, is used to lock the fiber on the center of the star in the focal plane. These actuators complement the attitude determination and control system of the satellite to maintain the sub-arcsecond pointing accuracy required to reach the excellent level of photometric precision. Overall, the mission raises multiple very difficult challenges: high temperature stability of the avalanche detector (achieved with a thermoelectric colling device), high pointing accuracy and stability, and short timeframe for the development.

Unfortunatly :

(Slide from Davos meeting this year)

The Hill sphere is not a dead loss if there is a J1407-like ring system there. The rather large radius inferred from the 1981 transit (2.3–4.0 Jupiter radii) may be evidence towards the presence of material in the Hill sphere.

What about the proper motions? Are the mutual stellar orbits around the galaxy taking us closer or away from the line of transit? If we're moving closer, how long might it take to bring b's orbit into a transiting line of sight?

Did this get launched? Judging by the blog on the project website, it is still on the ground. I think the middle of the transit is supposed to be happening around now...

On the other hand, there do seem to be various other projects currently monitoring the star, I wonder if they've seen anything...

http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_chr/lau2017.htm

xx.09.2017 ?
Arkyd 6A
PicSat
CANYVAL-X 1 (Tom)
CANYVAL-X 2 (Jerry)
CNUSail 1 (Papillon)
KAUSAT 5
SIGMA (KHUSAT 3)
STEP Cube Lab
Fox 1D
?


rockets PSLV launch Sr

not very good news...
https://picsat.obspm.fr/picsat/news/

Not sure if this is just PR or if we can expect this to pan out, but

Quote :

Dr K Sivan, director of Thiruvananthapuram-based Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), said, "Launch failure will not affect future missions as they will go as planned. But corrective measures will be taken in future for all types of vehicles as the heat shield separation mechanism is similar in all launchers."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/weight-issue-not-linked-to-pslv-heat-shield-glitch-isro-chief/articleshow/60343839.cms

Not to late ??

https://picsat.obspm.fr/news/allnews

The launch is near!
mroos, 2018-01-09 15:19:19

PicSat has been in India at the ISRO Sriharikota launch base since last month, and PicSat team members Mathias Lowak and Lester David have been on site to make sure that all is OK.
The launch is foreseen to happen on Friday 12 January at 4h48m AM Paris local time (9h28m local time in Shriharikota). It will happen on the PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) mission C40, together with a collection of other CubeSats and the larger Cartosat mission. After the ignition of the rocket, it should be about 20 minutes to reach the altitude of 505km where PicSat it to be released from its launch pod. The initialisation sequence is then automatically started, and 30 minutes later the antennas will deploy.

https://www.isro.gov.in/launcher/pslv-c40-cartosat-2-series-satellite-mission

India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, in its forty second flight (PSLV-C40), successfully launched the 710 kg Cartosat-2 Series Satellite for earth observation and 30 co-passenger satellites together weighing about 613 kg at lift-off. PSLV-C40 was launched from the First Launch Pad (FLP) of Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota.

Very bad news : PicSat is dead...

https://picsat.obspm.fr/news/522?locale=en

Ah, that's unfortunate. It was an interesting and ambitious project, would definitely have been cool if it had succeeded.

Post-mortem of the PicSat mission:

Nowak et al. "Short life and abrupt death of PicSat, a small 3U CubeSat dreaming of exoplanet detection"
https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.02677