Paper 14145-74
Paper 14145-74
Dark zone maintenance for the Habitable Worlds Observatory
9 July 2026 • 13:40 - 14:00 CEST | Room B4-M3
Abstract
To directly image and characterize Earth-like exoplanets, the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will be required to control or correct for wavefront errors on the order of picometers. Due to the limited flux of these exoplanets, this stability will need to be maintained for tens of hours thus requiring real-time wavefront sensing and control during science observations. Ideally, the observing strategy, dark zone maintenance (DZM) scheme, and post-processing algorithms are optimized together to maximize the potential science yield. Here we discuss a DZM algorithm that uses an extended Kalman filter to estimate the coherent electric field separate from the incoherent intensity in the science images using a single image per iteration. The coherent estimate is then used to determine a deformable mirror shape that will suppress the drift. We demonstrate the DZM closed-loop and post-processed performance with the exploratory analytical concept one (EAC1) in the presence of realistic drifts.
Presenter
Jet Propulsion Lab., Caltech (United States)
Dr Susan Redmond is an optical engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech. Her work focuses on developing instruments for Dark Matter and exoplanet experiments. She received her BEng from the Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador and then went on to obtain an MEng and MASc from the University of Toronto. Susan was awarded her PhD from Princeton University which focused on correcting quasi-static wavefront error drifts in telescopes. As part of her work, she has launched and operated balloon-borne astronomical telescopes from bases in Canada, USA, New Zealand, and Antarctica.