Princeton's starshade testbed has been utilized extensively over the past 5 years towards satisfying key milestones of NASA's "Starshade to TRL5 (S5) Technology Development Plan.”1,2,3,4 The initial optomechanical design & build of the long-travel (76m) laser testbed was presented at SPIE AS16 (2016).5 Since then, several key optomechanical upgrades have proven crucial to final milestone completion, including various light-tighting measures, thermal insulation & stabilization, cleanliness measures, a motorized X-Y camera stage, and—especially—a novel, light-tight, low-profile, multi-mask changer (for remote-operable toggling between various starshade masks, without disturbing the stability of the testbed's interior thermal and cleanliness environments). These final upgrades are summarized herein.
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