As part of NASA's mission to explore habitable planets orbiting nearby stars,
this paper explores the detection and characterization capabilities of a 4-m
space telescope plus 50-m starshade located at the Earth-Sun L2 point, a.k.a.
the New Worlds Observer (NWO). Our calculations include the true spectral types
and distribution of stars on the sky, an iterative target selection protocol
designed to maximize efficiency based on prior detections, and realistic
mission constraints. We carry out both analytical calculations and simulated
observing runs for a wide range in exozodiacal background levels ({\epsilon} =
1 - 100 times the local zodi brightness) and overall prevalence of Earth-like
terrestrial planets ({\eta}\oplus = 0.1 - 1). We find that even without any
return visits, the NWO baseline architecture (IWA = 65 mas, limiting FPB =
4\times10-11) can achieve a 95% probability of detecting and spectrally
characterizing at least one habitable Earth-like planet, and an expectation
value of ~3 planets found, within the mission lifetime and {\Delta}V budgets,
even in the worst-case scenario ({\eta}\oplus = 0.1 and {\epsilon} = 100 zodis
for every target). This achievement requires about one year of integration time
spread over the 5 year mission, leaving the remainder of the telescope time for
UV-NIR General Astrophysics. Cost and technical feasibility considerations
point to a "sweet spot" in starshade design near a 50-m starshade effective
diameter, with 12 or 16 petals, at a distance of 70,000-100,000 km from the
telescope.Comment: Refereed and accepted to PASP, scheduled for publication in the May
2012 issue (Vol. 124, No. 915
