The HabEx mission concept is intended to directly image planetary systems around nearby stars, and to perform a wide range of general astrophysics and solar system observations. Its main goal is the discovery and characterization of Earthlike exoplanets through high-contrast imaging and spectroscopy. The baseline HabEx concept would use both a coronagraph and a starshade for exoplanet science. We describe an alternative, “HabEx Lite” concept, which would use a starshade (only) for exoplanet science. The benefit is lower cost: by deleting the complex coronagraph instrument; by lowering observatory mass; by relaxing tolerances and stability requirements; by permitting use of a compact on-axis telescope design; by use of a smaller launch vehicle. The scientific penalty of this lower cost option is a smaller number of detected exoplanets of all types, including exoEarth candidates, and a smaller fraction of exoplanets with measured orbits. Our approach uses a non-deployed segmented primary mirror, whose manufacture is within current capabilities.

Date Published: 6 July 2018
PDF: 13 pages
Proc. SPIE 10698, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2018: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, 106980X (6 July 2018); doi: 10.1117/12.2310058

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10698:
Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2018: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave
Makenzie Lystrup; Howard A. MacEwen; Giovanni G. Fazio; Natalie Batalha; Nicholas Siegler; Edward C. Tong, Editor(s)