Infrared coronagraph for the Terrestrial Planet Finder Mission: I. Overview and design concept

Charles F. Lillie; Charles B. Atkinson; L. Suzanne Casement; Martin R. Flannery; Keith V. Kroening; Stewart L. Moses; Paul E. Glenn

doi:10.1117/12.457850

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3 March 2003 Infrared coronagraph for the Terrestrial Planet Finder Mission I: Overview and design concept

Charles F. Lillie, Charles B. Atkinson, L. Suzanne Casement, Martin R. Flannery, Keith V. Kroening, Stewart L. Moses, Paul E. Glenn

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Proceedings Volume 4860, High-Contrast Imaging for Exo-Planet Detection; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.457850
Event: Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, 2002, Waikoloa, Hawai'i, United States

Abstract

NASA wants to launch a Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission in 2014 to detect and characterize Earth-like planets around nearby stars, perform comparative planetology studies, and obtain general astrophysics observations. The detection of a 30th magnitude planet located within 80 milli-arcseconds of a 5th (Visual) magnitude star is an exceptionally challenging objective. Observations in the thermal infrared (7-17 mm) are somewhat easier since the planet is 'only' 15m fainter than the star at these wavelengths, but many severe challenges must still be overcome, including: Designing a spacecraft, a telescope and an IR coronagraph for star-planet separations equal to λ/D;(i) Providing a stable (~30K) thermal environment for the optics and isolating them from vibration sources; (ii)Developing a deployment scheme for a 28-m space telescope that can fit in an existing launch vehicle; (iii) Minimizing telescope mass to enable launch to L2 or a driftway orbit with a single launch vehicle; (iv) Generating a manufacturing plan that will permit TPF to be developed at a reasonable cost and schedule; (v) Identifying the key enabling technologies for TPF. This paper describes the IR Coronagraph we designed during our recent TPF Mission Architecture study in an effort to meet these challenges.

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Charles F. Lillie, Charles B. Atkinson, L. Suzanne Casement, Martin R. Flannery, Keith V. Kroening, Stewart L. Moses, and Paul E. Glenn "Infrared coronagraph for the Terrestrial Planet Finder Mission I: Overview and design concept", Proc. SPIE 4860, High-Contrast Imaging for Exo-Planet Detection, (3 March 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.457850

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