Having developed the implemented the generalized computational tools necessary to study the thermal-chemical kinetics of cirmstellar material around a variety of stellar types, we will complete with…

This federal contract, awarded by NASA's Shared Services Center to the SETI Institute, a non-profit research organization, provides $110,075 in funding for a research project focused on studying the thermal-chemical kinetics and molecular emission properties of circumstellar material around various stellar types. The work will involve developing computational models to simulate the impact of radiation environment and dust on the circumstellar material, with the goal of informing future observations using facilities such as the James Webb Space Telescope. This contract is not associated with any set-aside designation. The SETI Institute holds an Indefinite Delivery Contract (IDC) with NASA Headquarters, valued at up to $4.7 million, to provide multidisciplinary technical support services related to the design, development, and launch operations of spaceflight hardware, with a focus on planetary protection compliance.

Having developed the implemented the generalized computational tools necessary to study the thermal-chemical kinetics of cirmstellar material around a variety of stellar types, we will complete with the project with an extensive parameter-space exploration of how the the radiation environment and presence of dust in circumstellar material impacts the molecular emission. We will define and establish a grid of models that encompass a realistic range of physical conditions in circumstellar material and will run our models for these conditions. The 2D thermalchemical models will then be used to evaluate trends in the properties of the molecular emission. These studies will have two major impacts: (1) they will motivate the evaluation and potential identification of these trends in observational datasets, and (2) they will motivate the further development of detailed predictions of the radiative transfer of molecular emission in dustry circumstellar environments that will lay the groundwork for future proposals to study the observations that will be made with facilities such as jwst. The work of numerical modeling, analysis, and publication of the results will be performed by the PI while at the seti institute, including the the continued interaction with ongoing collaborations.