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Launching a starshade to rendezvous with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope would provide the first opportunity to directly image the habitable zones of nearby sunlike stars in the coming decade. A report on the science and feasibility of such a mission was recently submitted to NASA as a probe study concept. The driving objective of the concept is to determine whether Earth-like exoplanets exist in the habitable zones of the nearest sunlike stars and have biosignature gases in their atmospheres. With the sensitivity provided by this telescope, it is possible to measure the brightness of zodiacal dust disks around the nearest sunlike stars and establish how their population compares to our own. In addition, known gas-giant exoplanets can be targeted to measure their atmospheric metallicity and thereby determine if the correlation with planet mass follows the trend observed in the Solar System and hinted at by exoplanet transit spectroscopy data. In this paper we provide the details of the calculations used to estimate the sensitivity of Roman with a starshade and describe the publicly available Python-based source code used to make these calculations. Given the fixed capability of Roman and the constrained observing windows inherent for the starshade, we calculate the sensitivity of the combined observatory to detect these three types of targets and we present an overall observing strategy that enables us to achieve these objectives., Accepted for publication in the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS)

An external occulter for starlight suppression – a starshade – flying in formation with the Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission Concept (HabEx) space telescope could enable the direct imaging and spectrographic characterization of Earthlike exoplanets in the habitable zone. This starshade is flown between the telescope and the star, and suppresses stellar light sufficiently to allow the imaging of the faint reflected light of the planet. This paper presents a mechanical architecture for this occulter, which must stow in a 5 m-diameter launch fairing and then deploy to about a 80 m-diameter structure. The optical performance of the starshade requires that the edge profile is accurate and stable. The stowage and deployment of the starshade to meet these requirements present unique challenges that are addressed in this proposed architecture. The mechanical architecture consists of a number of petals attached to a deployable perimeter truss, which is connected to central hub using tensioned spokes. The petals are furled around the stowed perimeter truss for launch. Herein is described a mechanical design solution that supports an 80 m-class starshade for flight as part of HabEx.

The discovery of thousands of exoplanets is generating increasing interest in the direct imaging and characterization of these planets. Starshade, an external occulter, could fly in formation between a telescope and distant star, blocking out the light from the star, and enabling us to focus on the light of any orbiting planets. Recent technology developments in coordination with system level design, has added much needed detail to define the technology requirements for a science mission that could launch in the 2020’s. This paper addresses the mechanical architecture, the successful efforts to date, the current state of design for the mechanical system, and upcoming technology efforts.

This paper summarizes the modeling, simulation, and testing work related to the development of technology to investigate the potential that shape memory actuation has to provide mechanically simple and affordable solutions for delivering assets to a surface and for sample capture and possible return to Earth. We investigate the structural dynamics and controllability aspects of an adaptive beam carrying an end-effector which, by changing material equilibrium phases, is able to actively decouple the end-effector dynamics from the spacecraft dynamics during the surface contact phase. Asset delivery and sample capture and return are at the heart of several emerging potential missions to small bodies, such as asteroids and comets, and to the surface of large bodies, such as Titan.

A meter-scale piezoelectrically active composite re ector has been developed and tested. The active re ector consists of a spherically curved, graphite face sheet, aluminum honeycomb core composite panel augmented with a network of distributed piezoelectric composite actuators. The piezoelectric actuator system may be used for controlling the structural dynamic response of the re ector, or for correcting low-order, thermally-induced quasistatic distortions of the panel. In this study, thermally-induced surface deformations of 1 to 5 microns were deliberately introduced onto the re ector, then measured using a speckle holography system. The re ector surface gure was subsequently corrected to a tolerance of 100 nm using a lattice of 90 piezoelectric composite actuators distributed across the re ector’s back face sheet. Initial experimental investigations consisted of open-loop gure control to determine in uence functions and control authority for each individuallyaddressable actuator, followed by a closed-loop gure control implementation. This paper will describe the design, construction, and testing of the active composite re ector system under thermal loads, and subsequent correction of thermal deformations via distributed piezoelectric actuation.