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Session 24 - Star Formation in the Galaxy & the LMC.
Display session, Tuesday, June 10
South Main Hall,
The Milky Way Magnetic Field Mapping Mission, or M4, is a Small Explorer concept being proposed to NASA this summer. Its mission will be to map the magnetic field of the disk of the Milky Way, a nearby dark cloud complex and representative infrared cirrus using linear imaging polarimetry at far infrared wavelengths. For M4 to be a successful infrared mission, the telescope and detector arrays must be cooled to 2-5 K using superfluid liquid helium. The four month lifetime of the cryogen places strong contrains on the concept, and makes instrument and telescope designs heavily dependent on the operations plan.
In order to simulate and test possible modes of operation, we have developed a software tool designed to simulate several flight plans for the M4 mission. The movies to be shown at this poster simulate the polarimetric mapping scheme and its application to the Milky Way and nearby cloud complex surveys. This operations simulation tool has already been used to establish the M4 earth avoidance contraints and the time-averaged illumination of the solar panels. This tool has also helped to establish the engineering and performance requirements, launch window, and data collection plans and volumes for M4.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: jtwright@protostar.bu.edu
