A Mission to Nature's Telescope for High-Resolution Imaging of an Exoplanet
Louis D. Friedman, Darren Garber, Slava G. Turyshev, Henry Helvajian,, Thomas Heinshiemer, John McVey, and Artur R. Davoyan

TL;DR
This paper proposes a novel mission concept using solar sails and microsats to reach the solar gravitational lens region at 550 AU within 25 years, enabling high-resolution imaging of exoplanets.
Contribution
It introduces a new mission design utilizing solar sails and microsats for rapid transit to the SGL, facilitating high-resolution exoplanet imaging and other solar system exploration missions.
Findings
Design achieves over 20 AU/year exit speed from the solar system.
Enables high-resolution imaging of Earth-like exoplanets via the SGL.
Supports low-cost technology demonstration and diverse solar system missions.
Abstract
The solar gravitational lens (SGL) provides a factor of amplification for viewing distant point sources beyond our solar system. As such, it may be used for resolved imaging of extended sources, such as exoplanets, not possible otherwise. To use the SGL, a spacecraft carrying a modest telescope and a coronagraph must reach the SGLs focal region, that begins at 550 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun and is oriented outward along the line connecting the distant object and the Sun. No spacecraft has ever reached even a half of that distance; and to do so within a reasonable mission lifetime (e.g., less than 25 years) and affordable cost requires a new type of mission design, using solar sails and microsats (~kg). The payoff is high -- using the SGL is the only practical way we can ever get a high-resolution, multi-pixel image of an Earth-like exoplanet, one that we…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsAstro and Planetary Science · Spacecraft and Cryogenic Technologies · Spacecraft Dynamics and Control
