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The Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph (TPF-C) demands extreme wave front control and stability to achieve its goal of detecting earth-like planets around nearby stars. We describe the performance models and error budget used to evaluate image plane contrast and derive engineering requirements for this challenging optical system.
The objective of the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission is to find and characterize earth-like planets orbiting other stars. Three architectural options are under consideration for this mission: a formation-flying interferometer (FFI), a structurally-connected interferometer, and a coronagraph.
The Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) coronagraph study involves exploring the technologies that enable a coronagraph style instrument to image and characterize earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars. Testbeds have been developed to demonstrate the emerging technologies needed for this effort and an architecture study has resulted in designs of a facility that will provide the environment needed for the technology to function in this role. A broad community of participants is involved in this work through studies, analyses, fabrication of components, and participation in the design effort. The scope of activities - both on the technology side and in the architecture study side - will be presented in this paper. The status and the future plans of the activities will be reviewed.
A description of adaptive nulling for Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer (TPFI) is presented. The topics include: 1) Nulling in TPF-I; 2) Why Do Adaptive Nulling; 3) Parallel High-Order Compensator Design; 4) Phase and Amplitude Control; 5) Development Activates; 6) Requirements; 7) Simplified Experimental Setup; 8) Intensity Correction; and 9) Intensity Dispersion Stability. A short summary is also given on adaptive nulling for the TPFI.
Because of the complexity of the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) design concepts, the project will rely heavily on the use of engineering and science simulations to predict on-orbit performance. Furthermore, current understanding of these missions indicates that the 3m to 8m class optical systems need to be as stable as picometers in wavefront and sub-milli arcsec in pointing. These extremely small requirements impose on the models a level of predictive accuracy heretofore never achieved, especially in the area of microgravity effects, material property accuracy, thermal solution convergence, and all other second order modeling effects typically ignored. New modeling tools and analysis paradigms are developed which emphasize computational accuracy and fully integrated analytical simulations. The process is demonstrated on sample problems using the TPF Coronagraph design concept. The TPF project is also planning a suite of testbeds through which various aspects of the models and simulations will be verified.
The Terrestrial Planet Finder mission will study all aaspecs of planets outside our solar system: from their formation and development in disks of dust and gas around newly forming stars to the presence of those planets orbiting the nearest stars; from the numbers at various sizes and places to their suitability as an abode for life.
The technology plan for the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF-I) describes the breadth of technology development currently envisaged to enable TPF-I to search for habitable worlds around nearby stars.
The interferometric version of the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF-I) has the potential to find and characterize earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of over 250 nearby stars and to search for life using biomarkers in the atmospheres of any planets found. The scientific case for such a mission continues to be strengthened by on-going progress in the detection of planets via indirect means. This paper summarizes the status of TPF-I, illustrative scientific requirements for the mission, and its enabling technologies.
State of the art modeling for the Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph mission are being developed that will combine thermal, structural, and optical modeling in one package. This tool is discussed as well as specific modeling results highlighting the capabilities of integrated modeling for TPF.
NASA has decided to move forward with two complementary Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) missions, a visible coronagraph and an infrared formation flying interferometer. These missions are major missions in the NASA Office of Space Science Origins Theme. The primary science objectives of the TPF missions are to search for, detect, and characterize planets and planetary systems beyond our own Solar System, including specifically Earth-like planets.
This document discusses the potential of the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) for general astrophysics beyond its base mission, focusing on science obtainable with no or minimal modifications to the mission design, but also exploring possible modifications of TPF with high scientific merit and no impact on the basic search for extrasolar Earth analogs.
The Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) was proposed as a mission concept to the 2000 Decadal Survey, and received a very high ranking amongst the major initiatives that were then reviewed. As proposed, it was a formation flying array of four 3-m class mid-infrared telescopes, linked together as an interferometer. Its science goal was to survey 150 nearby stars for the presence of Earth-like planets, to detect signs of life or habitability, and to enable revolutionary advances in high angular resolution astrophysics. The Decadal Survey Committee recommended that $200M be invested to advance TPF technology development in the Decade of 2000-2010. This paper presents the results of NASA's investment.
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The goal of the Terrestrial Planet Finder Project Mission is to find life-bearing planets around nearby stars. Two types of instruments are competing for flight in 2015: a visible coronagraph and an infrared interferometer.
A recently completed NASA study has concluded that a Terrestrial Planet Finder could be launched within a decade to detect terrestrial planets around nearby stars. Such a mission, complemented by projects (Kepler and Eddington) that will provide statistical information on the frequency of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone, will determine key terms in the Drake equation that describes the number of intelligent civilizations in the Universe.
The Terrestrial Planet Finder, Planet Detection Test-bed is a lab based simulation of the optics and control systems for the Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer mission. The test-bed supports starlight nulling at 10um infrared wavelengths, with fringe tracking at 2um wavelengths and angle and shear tracking at visible wavelengths. It further allows injection of simulated planet light in the presence of the nulled star light, to allow testing of planet detection methods. We will describe the detailed construction and operation of the test-bed from an optical and control system perspective. We will also report the latest results for narrow band nulls, and the detection of broad band planet light in the presence of nulled starlight.
Occulting focal plane masks for the Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph (TPF-C) could be designed with continuous gray scale profile of the occulting pattern such as 1-sinc2 on a suitable material or with micron-scale binary transparent and opaque structures of metallic pattern on glass. We have designed, fabricated and tested both kinds of masks. The fundamental characteristics of such masks and initial test results from the High Contrast Imaging Test bed (HCIT) at JPL are presented.
Over the past two years, the focus of the project for the interferometric version of the Terrestrial Planet Finder(TPF-I) has been on the development of the scientific rational for the mission, the assessment of TPF-I architectures, the laboratory demonstration of key technologies, and the development of a detailed technology roadmap. The Science Working Group (SWG), in conjunction with European colleagues working on the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Darwin project, has reaffirmed the goals of TPF-I as part of a broad vision for the detection and characterization of Earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars and for the search for life on those planets. The SWG also helped to assess the performance of different interferometric configurations for TPF-I/Darwin. Building on earlier SWG reports, this document restates the scientific case for TPF-I, assesses suitable target stars and relevant wavelengths for observation, discusses dramatic new capabilities for general astrophysical observations, and summarizes how Spitzer has improved our knowledge of the incidence of zodiacal emission on the search for planets. This document discusses in some detail on laboratory advances in interferometric nulling and formation flying. Laboratory experiments have now achieved stable narrow- and broad-band nulling the levels of 10-6 and 2.0x10-5, respectively. A testbed has demonstrated formation flying using two realistic spacecraft mockups. With a suitably funded program of technology development, as summarized herein and described in more detail in the Technology Plan for the Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer (2005), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and ESA would be able to start within the coming decade a full-scale TPF-I/Darwin mission capable of finding Earths orbiting more than 150 nearby stars, or a scaled back interferometer capable of studying more than 30 stars. Finding evidence for life on just one of those planets would revolutionize our understanding of our place in the cosmos.