Exoplanetary Circumstellar Environments and Disk Explorer
Exoplanetary Circumstellar Environments and Disk Explorer is a proposed space telescope for NASA's Explorer program to observe circumstellar protoplanetary and debris discs and study planet formation around nearby stars of spectral classes M to B. Had it been selected for development, it was proposed to launch in 2019.
The spacecraft concept proposed to use a 70 centimeter diameter telescope-mounted coronagraph called PIAA to suppress starlight in order to be able to detect fainter radiation of circumstellar dust. Characterizing constitution of such disks would provide clues for planetary formation, while already existing exoplanets can be detected through their interaction with dust disk. The project's Principal Investigator is Glenn Schneider.
Science goals
The science goals of the concept mission are:- Explore the amount of dust in habitable zones.
- Determining if such a disk interferes with future planet finding missions.
- Determine composition of material delivered to planets: icy and organic molecule-rich particles are important for life.
- Determine fraction of massive planets on large orbits.
- Observe how protoplanetary disks make Solar System-like architectures.
- Constrain giant planets' composition by measuring their reflectivity. EXCEDE would be the first to image exoplanets distances from their stars similar to ours.