Seminar :: March 20 :: ULL NASA Starshade Undergraduate Challenge Team

The UL Lafayette team participated in the nationwide NASA-sponsored Starshade Undergraduate Challenge will be our seminar guest on Wednesday, March 21, 2024, 3 pm (Broussard Hall 116).

The Design and Construction of a Gas-Inflated Starshade

David Silva (Physics Senior), Harley Hardy (Physics, Senior), and Landon Degeytaire (Mechanical Engineering, Sophomore)

ABSTRACT
Our team was  tasked with designing a new type of Occulter to be paired with the NASA HOEE (Hybrid Observatory for Exoplanet Exploration) telescope. 
An Occulter is an object (usually placed in space) that intelligently obstructs the light of a bright object. The  occulter, the team worked on, is called a  Starshade, as its intention is to block the light of
stars in order to have a better view of exoplanets near those stars. There are dozens of Starshade designs within the 30-50 m diameter range that have existed for many years. Our design however, in order to
cast an appropriate shadow needed for the  HOEE telescope, had to be a 100 m in diameter. This requirement created many design challenges: primarily, a necessary reduction in mass and volume to adhere to launch parameters. This led to the creation of the GAS INFLATED RIGID STARSHADE (GIRS). GIRS is an innovative new Starshade design that uses an inflatable truss system that serves the dual purposes as the deployment mechanism and the supports for the structure. This new inflatable tubing system design significantly cuts down on the weight of the entire Starshade while still maintains the required rigidity. The new system  paired with cleverly placed shape memory alloys and damping mechanism, allow for a smooth deployment and rigid final structure.