The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) is a concept for a mission to directly image planetary systems around Sun-like stars. HabEx will be sensitive to all types of planets; however its main goal is, for the first time, to directly image Earth-like exoplanets, and characterize their atmospheric content. By measuring the spectra of these planets, HabEx will search for signatures of habitability such as water, and be sensitive to gases in the atmosphere possibility indicative of biological activity, such as oxygen or ozone.

Habitable Exoplanet Observatory

Mission Duration: 5 years (10 consumables)
Orbit: Earth-Sun L2 halo
Telescope Aperture: 4-meter unobscured
Telescope Type: Off-axis three-mirror anastigmat
Primary Mirror: 4-meter monolith; glass-ceramic substrate; Al+MgF2 coating
Instruments (4): Exoplanet Science: Coronograph, Starshade; Observatory Science: UV Spectograph, Workhorse Camera
Attitude Control: Slewing: hydrazine thrusters; Pointing: microthrusters

Instruments chart

Starshade Deployment Steps

Starshade deployment

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) includes 4 different instruments:

- multi-purpose near UV to near IR workhorse camera (HWC)
- high-resolution UV spectrograph (UVS)
- coronagraph-based high contrast imaging system
- starshade-based high contrast imaging system

Figure 1

Fig 1: The HabEx instrument fields-of-view on the sky. The axes are scaled in degrees.

Figure 2

Fig 2: Block diagram of HabEx Observatory, with its 4 instruments looking at different fields. The general observatory instruments can be used in parallel with the starshade and coronagraph instruments. The starshade and coronagraph instruments are nominally used sequentially.

Who To Contact

For Science, Press please contact:
Scott Gaudi: gaudi.1@osu.edu
Sara Seager: seager@mit.edu
Bertrand Mennesson: Bertrand.Mennesson@jpl.nasa.gov