Demonstration Of Deployment Repeatability Of Key Subsystems Of A Furled Starshade Architecture

Starshade concepts must be stowed within rocket fairings for launch and then deployed in space. The in-plane deployment accuracy must be on the order of hundreds of micrometers for sufficient starlight suppression to enable the detection and study of Earth-like exoplanets around nearby Sun-like stars. We describe tests conducted to demonstrate deployment repeatability of two key structural subsystems of the "furled" starshade architecture-the petal and the inner disk. Together, the petals and the inner disk create the in-plane shape of a starshade. Test articles to represent the petal and inner disk subsystems were constructed at relevant scales for a 26-m-diameter starshade. These test articles were subjected to stowage-and-deployment cycles and their shapes were measured. The measured performance-tens of parts per million of petal strain after deployment, and hundreds of micrometers of inner disk deployment accuracy-was found to be within required allocations. (C) The Authors.