The LUVOIR Mission Concept Study Final Report

Abstract

The Large UV/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) mission is one of four Decadal Survey Mission Concepts studied by NASA in preparation for the US National Academies' Astro2020 Decadal Survey. This observatory has the major goal of characterizing a wide range of exoplanets, including those that might be habitable -- or even inhabited. It would simultaneously enable a great leap forward in a broad range of astrophysics -- from the epoch of reionization, through galaxy formation and evolution, to star and planet formation. Powerful remote sensing observations of Solar System bodies will also be possible. This Final Report on the LUVOIR study presents the scientific motivations and goals of the mission concept, the engineering design, and technology development information. Please refer to the LUVOIR Final Report Appendices (separate document) for additional information.

426 pages

Cited by in corpus (38)

• Photochemistry of Anoxic Abiotic Habitable Planet Atmospheres: Impact of New H${}_2$O Cross-Sections
• The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) Technology Demonstration
• The future lifespan of Earth's oxygenated Atmosphere
• Chasing rainbows and ocean glints: Inner working angle constraints for the Habitable Worlds Observatory
• Understanding planetary context to enable life detection on exoplanets and test the Copernican principle
• Synergies between Venus & Exoplanetary Observations
• Variability due to climate and chemistry in observations of oxygenated Earth-analogue exoplanets
• Possibilities for an Aerial Biosphere in Temperate Sub Neptune-Sized Exoplanet Atmospheres
• Probing the capability of future direct imaging missions to spectrally constrain the frequency of Earth-like planets
• A New Method For Studying Exoplanet Atmospheres Using Planetary Infrared Excess
• Imaging exoplanets with coronagraphic instruments
• Analytical tolerancing of segmented telescope co-phasing for exo-Earth high-contrast imaging
• An Integrated Analysis with Predictions on the Architecture of the tau Ceti Planetary System, Including a Habitable Zone Planet
• Cloud Parameterizations and their Effect on Retrievals of Exoplanet Reflection Spectroscopy
• Interior Controls on the Habitability of Rocky Planets
• Atmospheric Dynamics of a Near Tidally Locked Earth-Size Planet
• Vortex Fiber Nulling for Exoplanet Observations: Implementation and First Light
• Biosignature Surveys to Exoplanet Yields and Beyond
• Sensitivity of the Roman Coronagraph Instrument to Exozodiacal Dust
• The Jiao Tong University Spectroscopic Telescope Project
• Three-dimensional numerical simulations of ambipolar diffusion in NS cores in the one-fluid approximation: instability of poloidal magnetic field
• CO${}_2$ ocean bistability on terrestrial exoplanets
• Some First Stars Were Red: Detecting Signatures of Massive Population III Formation Through Long-Term Stochastic Color Variations
• Follow the Water: Finding Water, Snow and Clouds on Terrestrial Exoplanets with Photometry and Machine Learning
• NIGHT: a compact, near-infrared, high-resolution spectrograph to survey helium in exoplanet systems
• Phase Modeling of the TRAPPIST-1 Planetary Atmospheres
• The Tianlin Mission: a 6m UV/Opt/IR space telescope to explore the habitable worlds and the universe
• Topological Designs for Scalar Vortex Coronagraphs
• APLC-Optimization: an apodized pupil Lyot coronagraph design survey toolkit
• Photobombing Earth 2.0: Diffraction Limit Related Contamination and Uncertainty in Habitable Planet Spectra
• Variations in climate habitability parameters and their effect on Earth's biosphere during the Phanerozoic Eon
• High Contrast Demonstrations of Novel Scalar Vortex Coronagraph Designs at the High Contrast Spectroscopy Testbed
• Redundant apodization for direct imaging of exoplanets I: Robustness to primary mirror segmentation-induced errors outside the segment diffraction limit
• Segment-level thermal sensitivity analysis for exo-Earth imaging
• Experimental validation of active control of low-order aberrations with a Zernike sensor through a Lyot coronagraph
• The DRAKE mission: finding the frequency of life in the Cosmos
• Redundant Apodized Pupils (RAP) for high-contrast imagers robust to segmentation-due aberrations and island effects
• Estimating low-order aberrations through a Lyot coronagraph with a Zernike wavefront sensor for exoplanet imaging