ESCAPE project: investigating observing strategies and post-processing methods for future high-contrast imaging space missions

The search for biosignatures in potentially habitable exoplanets is one of the major astrophysics’ drivers for the coming decades. It is the prime science case of HWO, a large space telescope that will be equipped with state-of-the art capabilities to directly characterize Earth-like planets in the 2040s. Ahead of this, the Roman Space Telescope will demonstrate critical technologies to reach 1e-8 contrast limits, using wavefront control and optimized coronagraphs for the first time in space. Given the stringent constraints on wavefront stability required to achieve these unprecedented contrast levels, new observing strategies and data post-processing techniques need to be developed to optimize detection capabilities with these missions. Here, we introduce the ESCAPE project, which explore new observing strategies that make use of the deformable mirrors to systematically sample wavefront variations during reference star observations to optimize the detection limits at postprocessing.