News India Times
April 8, 2016
6
Cover Story
– that’s all you need to know
he National
Aeronautics and
Space Administration
has selected an
Indian-American to
lead its team that will build a
new, cutting-edge instrument
that will detect planets outside
the solar system. Suvrath
Mahadevan, a professor of
astrophysics, space science and
nuclear physics at Penn State, is
NASA’s “Next-Gen Planet
Hunter.”
Mahadevan, a 37-year-old IIT
Bombay graduate, is engaged
with his team of 15-plus special-
ists, including his graduate stu-
dent Arpita Roy, to build the
highly precise instrument, to
detect “exoplanets” as they are
called, and expects to complete
it by Spring of 2019, when it will
be installed on the powerful tel-
escope at the Kitt Peak National
Observatory in Arizona, he told
News India Times.
Mahadevan’s instrument,
titled NEID (pronounced “nee-
id”), is derived from a word
meaning “to discover/visualize”
in the native language of the
Tohono O’odham, on whose
land Kitt Peak National
Observatory is located. It is also
short for NN-EXPLORE -
Exoplanet Investigations with
Doppler Spectroscopy.
The NEID will measure the
tiny back-and-forth wobble of a
star caused by the gravitational
tug of a planet in orbit around it.
The wobble tells scientists there
is a planet orbiting the star, and
the size of the wobble indicates
how massive the planet is. NEID
was one of two concepts for an
extreme precision Doppler spec-
trometer that were selected for a
detailed six-month study by
NASA in June 2015. Mahadevan’s
team won out.
“These instruments have a
very hard job,” said Mahadevan.
“Everything matters - from what
happens in the earth’s atmos-
phere to who is walking around
the instrument, could affect the
result.” The instrument is built
in vacuum chambers where
temperatures are kept stable to
one-thousandths of one degree.
“If the room temperature
changes by 1 percent, the instru-
ments feels only one-thou-
sandths of the change,”
Mahadevan explained.
The instrument will be the
centerpiece of a new partner-
ship with the National Science
Foundation (NSF) called the
NASA-NSF Exoplanet
Observational Research pro-
gram, or NN-EXPLORE.
According to NASA, using
NEID as a facility observatory
instrument, astronomers will be
able to search out and study
new planets and planetary sys-
tems, as well as follow-up the
discoveries of NASA’s planet-
hunting missions Kepler/K2 and
the in-development Transiting
Exoplanet Survey Satellite
(TESS). NEID will also help
identify promising targets for
future observations with the
JamesWebb Space Telescope
and theWide-Field Infrared
Survey Telescope.
Born in Ahmedabad,
Mahadevan is the son of
Malayalee parents, industrial
engineer N.S. Mahadevan, and
English teacher Vijaya
Mahadevan. He credits some of
his achievements to the “very
solid and thorough” grounding
at IIT Bombay, where he gradu-
ated in engineering and physics.
“It was very, very valuable to
me,” Mahadevan said, “An IIT
education really helps you think
out things, find innovative ways
to solve problems and a solid
core for attacking challenges.”
Mahadevan came to the U.S.
in 2000. After starting out as a
student at Penn State, he moved
to the University of Florida to
complete his studies. He
returned in 2009 to join the
Penn State faculty. He says
India’s work in space science is
impressive.
He collaborates with India’s
Physical Research Lab in
Ahmedabad and has collaborat-
ed with it to build an instrument
dedicated to finding planets.
India is already doing a lot on
space research, he says, chalking
up missions to the moon, a
planned mission to Mars, as well
as work on exoplanets which
has been going on for several
years, he said.
The search for “exoplanets”
he says, attracts people from all
backgrounds. “People flock to
this because they are passionate
about the subject, regardless of
their ethnicity or origin,” he
said, adding, “It belongs to all
humanity.”
Suvrath Mahadevan: NASA’s Planet Hunter
T
Astrophysicist Suvrath Mahadevan is NASA’s choice to build an instrument so delicate that it can measure
the slightest “wobble” in outer space, signaling the presence of new planets,
Ela Dutt
reports
