NASA’s EXCITE Mission Prepared for Scientific Balloon Flight
NASA Space Technology Scientists and engineers are ready to fly an infrared mission called EXCITE (EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope) to the edge of space.“EXCITE can give us a three-dimensional picture of a planet’s atmosphere and temperature by collecting data the whole time the world orbits its star,” said Peter Nagler, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Only a handful of these types of measurements have been done before. They require a very stable telescope in a position to track a planet for several days at a time.”EXCITE will study hot Jupiters, giant gas exoplanets that complete an orbit once every one to two days and have temperatures in the thousands of degrees. The worlds are tidally locked, which means the same side always faces the star.The telescope will observe how...
