Technology development roadmap for Habitable-zone exoplanet observatory (HabEx) baseline 4-m primary mirror

摘要

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) is one of four mission concepts under study for the 2020 Astrophysics Decadal Survey. Its goal is to directly image and spectroscopically characterize planetary systems in the habitable zone around nearby sun-like stars. Additionally, HabEx will perform a broad range of general astrophysics science enabled by 115 to 2500 nm spectral range and 3 × 3 arc-minute FOV. Critical to achieving the HabEx science goals is a large, ultrastable UV/Optical/Near-IR (UVOIR) telescope. The baseline HabEx telescope is 4-meter off-axis unobscured, diffraction limited at 400 nm with wavefront stability on the order of a few 10s of picometers. The technology readiness level (TRL) to manufacture and test the HabEx baseline primary mirror is assessed to be at TRL-6 for all but two TRL-4 technologies: 1) non-destructive process to quantify CTE homogeneity of a 4-m mirror substrate with a spatial sampling of at least 100 × 100 to better than +/- 1 ppb/K; and, 2) process to quantify self-weight gravity deflection to better than 4-nm rms over a 100 × 100 spatial sampling. This paper reviews the technology needs to manufacture the HabEx primary mirror, assesses their TRL and proposes a roadmap to mature the two remaining technologies to TRL-6.