A central theme in NASA's and ESA's vision for future missions is the search for habitable worlds and life beyond our Solar System. This presentation will review the current state of the art in planet-finding technology, with an emphasis on methods of starlight suppression. At optical wavelengths, Earth-like planets are about 10 billion times fainter than their host stars. Starlight suppression is therefore necessary to enable measurements of biosignatures in the atmospheres of faint Earth-like planets. Mission concepts based on coronagraph, starshade, and interferometers will be described along with their science objectives and technology requirements.


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    Title :

    Technology for Future Exoplanet Missions


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    International Astronautical Congress ; 2011 ; Cape Town, South Africa


    Publication date :

    2011-10-03


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    Technology for Future Exoplanet Missions

    Lawson, Peter / Devirian, Michael / van Zyl, Jakob | NTRS | 2011