HabEx Space Telescope: Design and Development of a 52 m Starshade for Exoplanet Science

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory mission concept is intended to directly image planetary systems around nearby stars using both a starshade and a coronagraph. Starshade development is currently being pursued under NASA's S5 technology program, targeting primarily a WFIRST rendezvous mission concept with a 26 m diameter starshade. That starshade concept is extensible to a 52 m starshade appropriate for HabEx and would be used in concert with Habex's coronagraph to perform primarily exoplanet system characterization including the extraction of spectral information. This poster outlines the optical requirement and design concepts for the 52 m starshade, shows starshade mechanical and flight system designs and the mechanical error budget and discusses a possible mission DRM with the random walk plot. The results of exoplanet yield modeling are also outlined. The information given here is provided for planning and discussion purposes only. This work was conducted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Copyright 2019 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged. All rights reserved.