Demonstration of deployment repeatability of key subsystems of a furled starshade architecture

Starshade concepts must be stowed within rocket fairings for launch and then deployed in space; the in-plane deployment accuracy must be on the order of hundreds of micrometers for sufficient starlight suppression to enable the detection and study of Earth-like exoplanets around nearby Sun-like stars. This paper describes tests conducted to demonstrate deployment accuracy of two key structural subsystems of the “furled” starshade architecture – the petal and the inner disk. Together, the petals and the inner disk create the in-plane shape of a starshade. Medium- fidelity petal and inner disk test articles were constructed at relevant scales for a 26 m-diameter starshade. These test articles were subjected to stowage-and-deployment cycles and their shapes were measured. The measured performance – tens of parts per million of petal strain after deployment, and hundreds of micrometers of inner disk deployment accuracy – was found to be within required allocations.