Deployment Technologies for Terrestrial Planet Finding Missions

摘要

The detection and characterization of exo-solar planets, which are 25 to 30 magnitudes fainter than their (5th to 6th visual magnitude) central stars, requires large aperture telescopes that must be folded to fit within the payload fairings of existing launch vehicles, and then deployed after reaching orbit. Many other elements of the various terrestrial planet finding observatories which have been proposed also must be deployed on orbit, including sunshades, solar arrays, high gain antennas and the external occulters ("starshades") that we have been designing for a "New Worlds Observer" mission. In this paper we discuss the requirements, tolerances, design options and technology readiness levels for deployment technologies for TPF-Coronagraph, -Interferometer, and - Occulter missions and describe our strawman design concepts.