Starshade mechanical design for the Habitable Exoplanet imaging mission concept (HabEx)

Arya, Manan; Webb, David R.; McGown, James G.; Lisman, P. Douglas; Shaklan, Stuart; Bradford, Samuel C.; Steeves, John; Hilgemann, Evan; Trease, Brian P.; Thomson, Mark; Warwick, Steve; Freebury, Gregg; Gull, Jamie

doi:10.1117/12.2275086

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The petals and the inner disk are exercised in sequence with a clean interface between them, and thus these two deployment steps can be studied independently. This starshade mechanical architecture has been described previously; [8][9][10][11][12] here it will be summarized in brief. Each petal has a planar truss of thermally stable carbon-fiber-composite members that maintains the petal width profile.…”

Section: Starshade Mechanical Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demonstration of deployment repeatability of key subsystems of a furled starshade architecture

Arya

Mechentel

Webb

et al. 2021

J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst.

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Section: Starshade Mechanical Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demonstration of deployment repeatability of key subsystems of a furled starshade architecture

Arya

Mechentel

Webb

et al. 2021

J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst.

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“…The second spacecraft is a 72 m star-shade. The star-shade will fly in formation at a separation of about 120,000 km from the telescope and both will form an externally occulting observatory [194][195][196]. WFIRST-CGI: Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST, launch expected in 2025) is defined as a technology demonstration mission and is a mission mainly projected for the study of dark matter but in the science case there is also the study and the characterization of extrasolar planets.…”

Section: Platomentioning

confidence: 99%

Biosignatures Search in Habitable Planets

Claudi

Alei

2019

Galaxies

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The search for life has had a new enthusiastic restart in the last two decades thanks to the large number of new worlds discovered. The about 4100 exoplanets found so far, show a large diversity of planets, from hot giants to rocky planets orbiting small and cold stars. Most of them are very different from those of the Solar System and one of the striking case is that of the super-Earths, rocky planets with masses ranging between 1 and 10 M ⊕ with dimensions up to twice those of Earth. In the right environment, these planets could be the cradle of alien life that could modify the chemical composition of their atmospheres. So, the search for life signatures requires as the first step the knowledge of planet atmospheres, the main objective of future exoplanetary space explorations. Indeed, the quest for the determination of the chemical composition of those planetary atmospheres rises also more general interest than that given by the mere directory of the atmospheric compounds. It opens out to the more general speculation on what such detection might tell us about the presence of life on those planets. As, for now, we have only one example of life in the universe, we are bound to study terrestrial organisms to assess possibilities of life on other planets and guide our search for possible extinct or extant life on other planetary bodies. In this review, we try to answer the three questions that also in this special search, mark the beginning of every research: what? where? how?

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“…Occultors to suppress light from stars popularly also known as star-shades are a similar class of structures being developed. The design consists of a deployable truss structure that acts as a primary support imparting the membrane with stiffness [12]. A network of spokes is used to effect intermediate control on the structure.…”

Section: Figure 2 Moire Space Telescope [4]mentioning

confidence: 99%

Modular Inflatable Composites for Space Telescopes

Chandra

Thangavelautham

2019

2019 IEEE Aerospace Conference

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There is an every-growing need to construct large space telescopes and structures for observation of exo-planets, main-belt asteroids and NEOs. Space observation capabilities can significant enhanced by large-aperture structures. Structures extending to several meters in size could potentially revolutionize observation enabling technologies. These include star-shades for imaging distant objects such as exo-planets and high-resolution large aperture telescopes. In addition to size, such structures require controllable precision surfaces and high packing efficiencies. A promising approach to achieving high compaction for large surface areas is by incorporating compliant materials or gossamers. Gossamer structures on their own do not meet stiffness requirements for controlled deployment. Supporting stiffening mechanisms are required to fully realize their structural potential. The accuracy of the 'active' surface constructed out of a gossamer additionally also depends on the load bearing structure that supports it. This paper investigates structural assemblies constructed from modular inflatable membranes stiffened pneumatically using inflation gas. These units assembled into composites can yield desirable characteristics. We present the design of large assemblies of these modular elements. Our work focuses on separate assembly strategies optimized for two broad applications. The first class of structures require efficient load bearing and distribution. Such structures do not need high precision surfaces but the ability to efficiently and reliably transmit large loads. This can be achieved using a hierarchical assembly of inflatable units. They also need to be stiffer as a collective assembly as compared to their constituent modules. Preferential placement of varying modular units leads to local stiffness modulation. This in-turn helps modify load transmission characteristics. Applications of such structures also extend to deployable drag-chutes or aero-breaking devices for atmospheric maneuvering. The second are structures with precision surfaces for optical imaging and high-gain communication apertures. We demonstrate over-constrained modular assemblies exhibiting elastic averaging when assembled with a very large number of modules. Averaging effects are amplified with the number of sub-units approaching required surface precision with a large enough number. Our work includes fundamental structural studies to evolve feasible sizing schemes for both classes of structures. A structural analysis strategy using discrete finite elements has been developed to simulate the assembled behavior of modular units. The structural model of each inflatable unit has been extended from our previous work to approximate each unit as a 3dimensional truss system. Analysis results are compared with full scale simulations on commercial analysis package LS-Dyna. Our analysis leads to an understanding of the extent to which inflatables can be scaled up effectively. Critical geometric design considerations are identified for stowed and dep...

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Starshade mechanical design for the Habitable Exoplanet imaging mission concept (HabEx)

Cited by 12 publications

References 2 publications

Demonstration of deployment repeatability of key subsystems of a furled starshade architecture

Demonstration of deployment repeatability of key subsystems of a furled starshade architecture

Biosignatures Search in Habitable Planets

Modular Inflatable Composites for Space Telescopes

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