PICTURE-D: Planetary Imaging Coronagraph Testbed Using a Reusable Experiment for Debris Disks (PICTURE-D)

Planetary Imaging Coronagraph Testbed Using a Reusable Experiment for Debris Disks (PICTURE-D) is a balloon-borne suborbital research program to directly image several debris disks of nearby star systems in reflected visible light. The mission aims to characterize warm dust close to the host stars, examine planet-dust interactions and determine dust background levels for future exoplanet imaging missions. PICTURE-D is a follow-on to the PICTURE-C mission, which developed all of the required key technologies and established a functional direct-imaging balloon platform. PICTURE-C consists of a self-aligning, unobscured telescope feeding a vector vortex coronagraph. It includes adaptive optics systems for wavefront stabilization and high-contrast imaging. PICTURE-C successfully performed its first engineering flight in September, 2019 from Ft. Sumner, NM and was prepared for a second science flight in October, 2021. Unfortunately, the mission had 6 scrubbed launch attempts in 2021 due to bad weather and launch safety concerns and could not launch before the end of the campaign. The flight has been rescheduled for fall of 2022. PICTURE-D will maintain a strong heritage to PICTURE-C, reusing all of the same hardware with a few strategic upgrades to increase scientific yield. The mission will also reuse the Wallops Arc Second Pointer (WASP) pointing system and gondola from PICTURE-C. The greatly reduced development time will result in the opportunity to perform multiple science flights. The five year mission will consist of three conventional balloon flights, nominally from Ft. Sumner, NM, but with the possibility of a southern hemisphere flight from Alice Springs, AUS. Over the course of these three flights, PICTURE-D will observe 6-10 debris disk and exoplanetary systems. It will characterize these systems using 5-band photometry over a 20% visible bandpass (540-660 nm) and at a raw contrast level of < 1x10^-7. PICTURE-D will upgrade the detector system, vortex coronagraph, and wavefront control algorithms of PICTURE-C to advance new technologies and enable new scientific endeavors. The existing detector will be upgraded from a traditional CCD to an Electron Multiplying CCD (EMCCD) to drastically improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the science images. To enable dust polarimetry measurements, PICTURE-D will advance the TRL of new vortex coronagraph architectures, including the double/triple grating vortex and possibly the scalar vortex. The key advantage of these designs over the vector vortex coronagraph flown on PICTURE-C is they both allow high contrast imaging in two orthogonal polarizations simultaneously. Finally, PICTURE-D will implement Multi-Star Wavefront Control to observe dust populations in binary star systems. This is purely a software upgrade in the wavefront control system, no new hardware is required. PICTURE-D will advance Goal 1 listed in the 2018 National Academy of Science report entitled, Exoplanet Science Strategy – to understand the formation and evolution of planetary systems as products of the process of star formation, and characterize and explain the diversity of planetary system architectures, planetary compositions, and planetary environments produced by these processes. PICTURE-D, takes the first observational steps towards several of the recommended findings from this report. PICTURE-D will also play a major role in technology maturation for a future flagship IR/Optical/UV exoplanet imaging mission, as was designated with the highest priority in the Astro2020 decadal survey. The PICTURE-D team includes several graduate and undergraduate students as well as early career scientists and technologists who will advance future exoplanetary studies such as LUVOIR and HabEX long after honing their skills on a pathfinding program.

The Astrophysics Research and Analysis program (APRA) supports suborbital and suborbital-class investigations, development of detectors and supporting technology, laboratory astrophysics, and limited ground based observing. Basic research proposals in these areas are solicited for investigations that are relevant to NASA's programs in astronomy and astrophysics, including the entire range of photons, gravitational waves, and particle astrophysics. The emphasis of this solicitation is on technologies and investigations that advance NASA astrophysics missions and goals.

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