Design of a laboratory testbed for external occulters at flight Fresnel numbers

Abstract

One of the main candidates for creating high-contrast for future Exo-Earth detection is an external occulter or sharshade. A starshade blocks the light from the parent star by flying in formation along the line-of-sight from a space telescope. Because of its large size and scale it is impossible to fully test a starshade system on the ground before launch. Instead, we rely on modeling supported by subscale laboratory tests to verify the models. At Princeton, we are designing and building a subscale testbed to verify the suppression and contrast of a starshade at the same Fresnel number as a flight system, and thus mathematically identical to a realistic space mission. Here we present the mechanical design of the testbed and simulations predicting the ultimate contrast performance. We will also present progress in implementation and preliminary results.