WFIRST Coronagraph Instrument: progress toward direct imaging of cool planets in near-by solar systems

One of the two instruments on NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is a coronagraph technology demonstrator. The Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) will demonstrate in space, for the first time, key technologies necessary for future Earth imaging missions, including high actuator count deformable mirrors, low-noise, single photon-counting detectors in the visible, new coronagraph masks and architectures, low-resolution integral field spectroscopy, advanced algorithms for wavefront sensing and control, high-fidelity integrated spacecraft and coronagraph modeling, and post-processing approaches to extract images and spectra. The importance of this technology demonstration to lower the design and implementation risk of the next generation of large telescopes cannot be overstated. In this paper, we will present the CGI design details and capability predictions. While CGI is nominally manifested as a technology demonstrator, NASA is committed to also making CGI available to the general astronomy community for science investigations should it successfully complete its initial commissioning in the first year of mission operations.