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Exoplanet Coronagraph Shaped Pupil Masks and Laboratory Scale Star Shade Masks: Design, Fabrication and CharacterizationStar light suppression technologies to find and characterize faint exoplanets include internal coronagraph instruments as well as external star shade occulters. Currently, the NASA WFIRST-AFTA mission study includes an internal coronagraph instrument to find and characterize exoplanets. Various types of masks could be employed to suppress the host star light to about 10 -9 level contrast over a broad spectrum to enable the coronagraph mission objectives. Such masks for high contrast internal coronagraphic imaging require various fabrication technologies to meet a wide range of specifications, including precise shapes, micron scale island features, ultra-low reflectivity regions, uniformity, wave front quality, achromaticity, etc. We present the approaches employed at JPL to produce pupil plane and image plane coronagraph masks by combining electron beam, deep reactive ion etching, and black silicon technologies with illustrative examples of each, highlighting milestone accomplishments from the High Contrast Imaging Testbed (HCIT) at JPL and from the High Contrast Imaging Lab (HCIL) at Princeton University. We also present briefly the technologies applied to fabricate laboratory scale star shade masks.
Document ID
20170007052
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Balasubramanian, Kunjithapatha
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
White, Victor
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Yee, Karl
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Echternach, Pierre
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Muller, Richard
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Dickie, Matthew
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Cady, Eric
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Mejia Prada, Camilo
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Ryan, Daniel
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Poberezhskiy, Ilya
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Zhou, Hanying
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Kern, Brian
(Princeton Univ. Princeton, NJ, United States)
Riggs, A. J.
(Princeton Univ. Princeton, NJ, United States)
Zimmerman, Neil T.
(Princeton Univ. Princeton, NJ, United States)
Sirbu, Dan
(Princeton Univ. Princeton, NJ, United States)
Shaklan, Stuart
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Kasdin, Jeremy
(Princeton Univ. Princeton, NJ, United States)
Date Acquired
August 1, 2017
Publication Date
August 9, 2015
Subject Category
Astronomy
Meeting Information
Meeting: SPIE Optics + Photonics
Location: San Diego, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: August 9, 2015
End Date: August 13, 2015
Sponsors: International Society for Optical Engineering
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
black silicon
WFIRST-AFTA coronagraph

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