The PICTURE-C exoplanetary imaging balloon mission: laboratory coronagraph demonstrations of high-contrast imaging and low-order wavefront control

Christopher B. Mendillo; Kuravi Hewawasam; Jason Martel; Thaddeus Potter; Timothy A. Cook; Supriya Chakrabarti

doi:10.1117/12.2630237

27 August 2022 The PICTURE-C exoplanetary imaging balloon mission: laboratory coronagraph demonstrations of high-contrast imaging and low-order wavefront control

Christopher B. Mendillo, Kuravi Hewawasam, Jason Martel, Thaddeus Potter, Timothy A. Cook, Supriya Chakrabarti

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 12180, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave; 1218022 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2630237
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2022, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Abstract

The Planetary Imaging Concept Testbed Using a Recoverable Experiment - Coronagraph (PICTURE-C) mission will directly image debris disks and exozodiacal dust around nearby stars from a high-altitude balloon using a vector vortex coronagraph. The first flight of PICTURE-C launched from the NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) in Ft. Sumner, NM on September 28, 2019. This flight successfully demonstrated many key technologies for exoplanetary direct imaging missions and all hardware components for the second, sciencefocused flight of PICTURE-C, which had been scheduled for the fall of 2021, but was delayed due to inclement weather until 2022. We present laboratory demonstrations of the flight 2 coronagraph, which uses a high-order 952 actuator MEMS deformable mirror to create a high-contrast dark zone at the 10^-7 level. The performance of the low-order and high-order wavefront control systems is demonstrated and compared with model predictions.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Christopher B. Mendillo, Kuravi Hewawasam, Jason Martel, Thaddeus Potter, Timothy A. Cook, and Supriya Chakrabarti "The PICTURE-C exoplanetary imaging balloon mission: laboratory coronagraph demonstrations of high-contrast imaging and low-order wavefront control", Proc. SPIE 12180, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, 1218022 (27 August 2022); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2630237

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available