Starlight Suppression Technologies for the Habitable Worlds Observatory Flagship

Chairs: Ruslan Belikov and Brendan Crill

About this Meeting

AAS241 splinter session

NASA is about to embark on an ambitious program to develop a Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) flagship mission to directly image ~25 potentially Earth-like planets and spectroscopically characterize them for signs of life, as recommended by the Astro2020 decadal survey. In addition, Astro2020 recommended a new approach for flagship formulation, which involves increasing the scope and depth of early, pre-phase A trades and technology maturation, as part of the new Great Observatories Maturation Program (GOMAP).

A critical capability of the HWO mission is starlight suppression. To inform future architecture trades, we will need to survey a wide range of technologies, from the relatively mature such as the ones described in the LUVOIR and HabEx reports, to the relatively new and emerging ones, which may lead to breakthrough performance. The purpose of this splinter session is to discuss the current status and future potential of different coronagraph technologies (including wavefront control), starshade technologies, and architectures.

Agenda