Cool Stars 14 - Submitted Abstract # 371
This version created on 05 October 2006

How Many Planets Will TPF-I Find?  - A new model of mission capability


Sarah Hunyadi, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Oliver Lay, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer (TPF-I) is a NASA
formation flying  interferometer that searches stars for light
from orbiting extrasolar planets.  Of primary interest are
planets in the habitable zone, the region around the stars
where liquid water may exist. We present mission modeling that
determines  the completeness of habitable zone observations over
the course of the TPF-I  mission. Completeness is defined to be
the fraction of potentially observable planets that are
detected over a mission. Our algorithm selects the most 
productive of the TPF candidate stars to observe in each week of
the mission.  It accounts for multiple visits, solar
constraints, variable baselines and planet orbital motion,
removing many of the assumptions that were necessary in 
previous analyses. We describe the multi-level optimization
approach and report on preliminary results from the program
completeness analysis. 


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