SAC Meeting 24 Sept 2006 FIRE Status Report F F olded port I I nfra- R R ed E E chellette MIT Rob Simcoe Adam Burgasser Paul Schechter U. Michigan Rebecca Bernstein Mario Mateo U. Arizona Xiaohui Fan

SAC Meeting 24 Sept 2006 Instrument Concept: A NIR Cousin of ESI / MagE Single shot zJHK ( µm) spectroscopy R = 6000 prism/grating X-dispersed echellette (R=12000 for 2 pixel slit, best seeing, GLAO) R = high throughput prism mode F/11, folded port z>6 QSOs/ISM, 1<z<3 galaxies, IR-GRBs, brown dwarfs, KBOs, stellar populations, etc.

SAC Meeting 24 Sept 2006 infrasil ZnSe 0.54x0.67 m 2 enclosed H2RG + SIDECAR R1 grating/mirror infrasil CaF 2 slit & Offner relay

SAC Meeting 24 Sept 2006

Updates & Current Status Managerial: –Simcoe hired onto MIT faculty  personnel stability and additional internal resources –Project manager Richard Foster (Chandra/ACIS, ASTRO-E/AXIS) to be hired –Strong support to develop MIT O/IR Lab Instrumental: –Optical design nearing completion (Bernstein) –Mechanical design to be done Oct-Nov 2005 (Simcoe & Bruce Bigelow)

SAC Meeting 24 Sept 2006 Updates & Current Status Funding: –NSF MRI was not successful Concept, science, optical design all excellent Concern over IR instrumentation experience Overly optimistic timeline Lack of detailed mechanical design Strategies in place to address concerns for 2006 MRI –Burgasser & Simcoe internal funding sufficient to complete design, take project through DR –Additional funding from MIT, X. Fan TBD

SAC Meeting 24 Sept 2006 Upcoming Strategic Milestones January NSF MRI –Interact with NIR instrumentation community –Finalized optical design –Preliminary mechanical design May PDR/IDR –Finalized mechanical design, thermal analysis/modeling, dewar design, cryogenic mechanisms, control software (OCIW?), etc –Potential reviewers have been contacted, to include Magellan engineers