STtarlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry (STARI) mission

We introduce the NASA-funded mission STARI (STarlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry), a two-spacecraft technology demonstrator for future long-baseline interferometers. STARI will perform, to our knowledge, the first in-space transfer of starlight between free-flying spacecraft, a critical step toward kilometer-scale missions. Two propulsive 8U CubeSats in low Earth orbit will fly in formation with separations up to 100 m: one relays a narrow stellar beam to the other, where an off-axis parabola reimages it into a single-mode fiber. Using differential GPS, visible LED beacons, and fast-steering mirrors in closed loop, we aim to sustain diffraction-limited, high-throughput fiber coupling during formation flight. STARI, targeting launch in 2029, is designed to retire key optical and control risks for missions such as the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFE) that seek to detect atmospheric biomarkers on nearby Earth-like exoplanets.