Developing Starshade Technology to Image Earth-sized Exoplanets Around Neighboring Stars
This blog post originated in the 2017 Science Mission Directorate Technology Highlights Report (33 MB PDF). Technology Development Acquiring images and spectra from planets around our neighboring stars could give us a sense of their atmospheres and habitability—but only if we can block out the star’s light. The light reflected off an Earth-sized planet around a Sun-like star is about 10 billion times dimmer than the light from the parent star itself. Along with coronagraphs, a starshade is a type of occulter technology that is being developed by NASA to suppress starlight, enabling direct imaging and spectra observations to help probe for evidence of atmospheric gases, some of which may be related to life. This method requires a sufficient contrast (the ratio of the light from the planet compared to the star) of 10-10, a level that cannot be reached by conventional ground-based telescopes or even current space-based telescopes operating without a starshade or a...