The LUVOIR Mission Concept: Design and Technology Overview
Abstract
The Large Ultraviolet/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) is one of four mission concepts being studied by NASA for the 2020 Decadal Survey in Astronomy and Astrophysics. LUVOIR will be capable of a broad range of science, including: direct imaging and characterization of a wide range of exoplanets and the search for biosignatures on Earth-like planets around sun-like stars; studying galaxy formation and evolution; investigating star and planet formation; and remote sensing of bodies within the Solar System. This poster will provide an overview of the LUVOIR system architecture and provide design details for each of the LUVOIR concepts. LUVOIR-A is a 15-m on-axis segmented aperture telescope with a suite of four instruments: the High Definition Imager (HDI), the LUVOIR Ultraviolet Multi-object Spectrograph (LUMOS), the Extreme Coronagraph for Living Planetary Systems (ECLIPS), and POLLUX. LUVOIR-B is an 8-m off-axis segmented aperture telescope with its own versions of the HDI, LUMOS, and ECLIPS instruments. Enabling a mission as ambitious as LUVOIR requires an array of technologies, such as ultra-stable structures and optics, precision metrology and wavefront sensing, high-contrast imaging techniques, large-format detectors with very low noise, and high-throughput ultraviolet instrumentation. Critically, a systems-level approach must be taken to developing these technologies, guided by architecture studies to place each technology in the appropriate system context. This poster will describe three technology systems: the ultra-stable segmented telescope system, the high-contrast coronagraph system, and the ultraviolet instrumentation system. We will also present a technology development plan to mature each of these technology systems to TRL 6 prior to the start of the LUVOIR mission Phase A.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #235
- Pub Date:
- January 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AAS...23517118D