DEUCE

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DEUCE

Dual-channel Extreme Ultraviolet Continuum Experiment

Sounding rocket to narrow the search for habitable planets

The Dual-channel Extreme Ultraviolet Continuum Experiment (DEUCE) is a sounding rocket that will measure the shorter, extreme-ultraviolet wavelengths of two Sun-like stars, Alpha Centauri A and B. Working in conjunction with SISTINE, these rockets will take these important measurements of ultraviolet light to help narrow the search for habitable planets.

Mission Class:

Suborbitals

Mission Status:

Current

LASP Roles:

Research, Instruments, Mission Operations, Engineering, Lead Institute

Science Target:

Interstellar

Mission Focus:

Exoplanets, Interstellar Dust, Planetary Atmosphere, Stellar Physics

LASP Mission Site:

https://lasp.colorado.edu/cusp/deuce/

Launch date: scheduled for July 12, 2022

Lead Institution: LASP

Lead Funding Agency: NASA Astrophysics

Partners: Equatorial Launch Australia

The goal of the DEUCE (Dual-channel Extreme Ultraviolet Continuum Spectrograph) mission is to measure the amount of the Lyman continuum (LyC) radiation that is being produced by the only two non-white-dwarf stars in our galaxy known to have a sufficiently low enough neutral hydrogen column density to measure their ionizing radiation directly. The results of this mission will help to answer one of the major questions of modern astrophysics concerning how and when galaxies first formed and how did their formation “feedback” into their circumgalactic environments to modify early galaxy formation during the Epoch of Re-ionization at Z=6-11.

DEUCE aims to make the first direct EUV observation in the crucial 500 – 900 Å window of a potential exoplanet host star system, Alpha Centauri A+B. This will be the first observation of a low-mass star other than the Sun in the 500 – 900 Å bandpass.