Northrop Grumman Demonstrates Starshade's Ability to Identify Celestial Objects with Successful Tests at McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope in Arizona
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The team experimented with three different starshade designs, a circular shape and two petal-shaped designs. The petal-shaped designs demonstrated superior performance, allowing the team to clearly view objects surrounding Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and the stars Sirius and Vega.
"The physics of the circular shape have been known for years," said
The starshade is a free-flying occulter intended to fly thousands of kilometers in front of a space telescope and block out the light of a nearby star, enabling astronomers to directly see planets surrounding the stars. The technology is specifically intended to detect Earth-like planets.
The 2.1 meter heliostat mirror at McMath-Pierce is conducive for starshade research as it provides distance between the starshade and the imaging telescope while tracking stars and planets to the accuracies required for long exposure times. McMath-Pierce is operated by the
"Starshade is one of the many innovative and exciting projects we are developing to advance human discoveries in space," said
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