The Large UV/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR): Decadal Mission Concept Study Update

Abstract

In preparation for the 2020 Decadal Survey in Astronomy and Astrophysics, NASA commissioned the study of four large mission concepts: the Large UV/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR), the Habitable Exoplanet Imager (HabEx), the far-infrared surveyor Origins Space Telescope (OST), and the X-ray surveyor Lynx. The LUVOIR Science and Technology Definition Team (STDT) has identified a broad range of science objectives for LUVOIR that include the direct imaging and spectral characterization of habitable exoplanets around sun-like stars, the study of galaxy formation and evolution, the exchange of matter between galaxies, star and planet formation, and the remote sensing of Solar System objects. The LUVOIR Study Office, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), is developing two mission concepts to achieve the science objectives. LUVOIR-A is a 15-meter segmented-aperture observatory that would be launched in an 8.4-meter extended fairing on the Space Launch System (SLS) Block 2 configuration. LUVOIR-B is an 8-meter unobscured segmented aperture telescope that fits in a smaller, conventional 5-meter fairing, but still requires the lift capacity of the SLS Block 1B Cargo vehicle. Both concepts include a suite of serviceable instruments: the Extreme Coronagraph for Living Planetary Systems (ECLIPS), an optical/near-infrared coronagraph capable of delivering 10 (sup minus 10) contrast at inner working angles as small as 2 lambda divided by D; the LUVOIR UV Multi-object Spectrograph (LUMOS), which will provide low- and medium-resolution UV (100-400 nanometer) multi-object imaging spectroscopy in addition to far-UV imaging; the High Definition Imager (HDI), a high-resolution wide-field-of-view NUV-Optical-NIR imager. LUVOIR-A also has a fourth instrument, Pollux, a high-resolution UV spectro-polarimeter being contributed by Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). This paper provides an overview of the LUVIOR science objectives, design drivers, and mission concepts