The PICTURE-C exoplanetary imaging balloon mission: second flight results and the transition to a new mission, PICTURE-D

Christopher B. Mendillo; Kuravi Hewawasam; Jason Martel; Thaddeus Potter; Sunip Mukherjee; Timothy A. Cook; Supriya Chakrabarti; Frans Snik; David S. Doelman; Dan Sirbu; Ruslan Belikov; Eduardo Bendek; Karl Stapelfeldt; Schuyler Grace Wolff

doi:10.1117/12.2677518

5 October 2023 The PICTURE-C exoplanetary imaging balloon mission: second flight results and the transition to a new mission, PICTURE-D

Christopher B. Mendillo, Kuravi Hewawasam, Jason Martel, Thaddeus Potter, Sunip Mukherjee, Timothy A. Cook, Supriya Chakrabarti, Frans Snik, David S. Doelman, Dan Sirbu, Ruslan Belikov, Eduardo Bendek, Karl Stapelfeldt, Schuyler Grace Wolff

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 12680, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets XI; 126800F (2023) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2677518
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2023, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The PICTURE-C balloon mission launched on its second flight from Fort Sumner, NM on September 28, 2022. During this flight, PICTURE-C, which consists of a 60 cm off-axis telescope feeding a vector vortex coronagraph, demonstrated the first high-contrast dark hole from an observatory in a near-space environment. The coronagraph achieved a modest broadband (20%) contrast ratio of 5 x 10^-6 , with performance limited by dynamic pointing transients. The low-order wavefront control system achieved optical pointing stabilization of one milliarcseconds RMS for intervals of up to 30 seconds between these transients. This paper will summarize the second flight results and present the development path for PICTURE-D, the next generation direct imaging balloon mission.

Conference Presentation

(2023) Published by SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Citation Download Citation

Christopher B. Mendillo, Kuravi Hewawasam, Jason Martel, Thaddeus Potter, Sunip Mukherjee, Timothy A. Cook, Supriya Chakrabarti, Frans Snik, David S. Doelman, Dan Sirbu, Ruslan Belikov, Eduardo Bendek, Karl Stapelfeldt, and Schuyler Grace Wolff "The PICTURE-C exoplanetary imaging balloon mission: second flight results and the transition to a new mission, PICTURE-D", Proc. SPIE 12680, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets XI, 126800F (5 October 2023); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2677518

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