MANTIS: Monitoring Activity from Nearby sTars with uv Imaging and Spectroscopy

The Astro2020 Decadal Survey recommended the “Worlds and Suns in Context” as one of the key focus areas for astrophysics in the next two decades, highlighting the importance of a full-system approach to understanding star-planet systems. Characterization and monitoring of the ultraviolet (UV) radiation from planet-hosting stars and their proxies was specifically called out as crucial for understanding habitable environments and interpreting spectra from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). With this charge in mind, we propose a four-year suborbital-class research program to build, launch, and operate MANTIS (Monitoring Activity of Nearby sTars with uv Imaging and Spectroscopy). MANTIS is a 12U CubeSat mission that will characterize the high-energy stellar radiation that drives atmospheric photochemistry and escape on extrasolar planets by conducting simultaneous observations of exoplanet host stars at extreme-ultraviolet (100–900~\AA; EUV), far-ultraviolet (900–2000Å; FUV), near-ultraviolet (2000–3200Å; NUV), and visible (3200–10000Å; VIS) wavelengths. MANTIS will provide the first EUV astrophysics capability in over 20 years. MANTIS will carry out two observing surveys to complete these science objectives. The Jwst Ultraviolet Monitoring Program (JUMP) will conduct UV monitoring of exoplanetary systems contemporaneous with JWST transiting planet observations. JWST has now made the first direct observations of UV-driven photochemistry on extrasolar planets, and it is widely understood that UV inputs will be critical to interpreting the JWST spectra that will be acquired in the next several years. MANTIS provides the only facility able to acquire these essential simultaneous EUV, FUV, and NUV inputs. In parallel with the JUMP survey, MANTIS will carry out the Multi-band Ultraviolet Monitoring Survey (MUMS) to create the first survey of nearby F, G, K, and M dwarf stars simultaneously observed at EUV through optical wavelengths. MANTIS will characterize the EUV outputs of the largest sample of cool stars ever obtained and measure stellar EUV, FUV, NUV, and VIS variability on flare and stellar-rotational timescales for the first time. Long term monitoring in several UV bandpasses is necessary to quantify the radiation environments experienced by exoplanets on multiple timescales and across stellar mass and age. MUMS will serve as a community resource of UV input data for exoplanet and stellar studies from JWST and ARIEL to the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) and beyond. The MANTIS design comprises a two-telescope science payload that enables simultaneous observations over EUV, FUV, NUV, and VIS bandpasses. An 8.5cm diameter grazing incidence telescope contributed by The Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) feeds a low-resolution EUV spectrograph. A 14x9cm rectangular Cassegrain telescope feeds a dichroic beamsplitter to divide the light into both an NUV/VIS and FUV channel. The FUV channel is folded onto the same photon-counting microchannel plate detector as the EUV channel, with a QE optimized for these higher-energy bands. The NUV/VIS channel is split by a low-resolution grating with both imaged on an NUV optimized CCD. The MANTIS design, detector systems, spacecraft bus and mission operations build off of the heritage of the CUTE and SPRITE CubeSats developed by the MANTIS team at CU-LASP. The proposed program is led by two early-career researchers with the support and guidance of an experienced LASP science and engineering team. The MANTIS mission will build off of LASP’s long-standing framework of diverse, student-led space science programs to focus on training the next generation of engineers and scientists.

The Astrophysics Research and Analysis program (APRA) supports suborbital and suborbital-class investigations, development of detectors and supporting technology, laboratory astrophysics, and limited ground-based observing. Basic research proposals in these areas are solicited for investigations that are relevant to NASA's programs in astronomy and astrophysics, including the entire range of photons, gravitational waves, and particle astrophysics. The emphasis of this solicitation is on technologies and investigations that advance NASA astrophysics missions and goals.

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