JPL Selects AOX for Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope Contract

The WFIRST observatory. Photo: NASA.

Adaptive Optics Associates (AOX), a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, has received a sole-source contract to provide mission-critical optical technology for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) coronagraph instrument. The AOX team successfully completed the preliminary design studies in early 2016 with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

WFIRST is a future infrared space observatory that the U.S. National Research Council Decadal Survey recommended in 2010 as the top priority for the next decade of astronomy. The WFIRST telescope will be equipped with a specialized optical-imaging coronagraph, which will have the potential to directly image exoplanets over the course of its mission using AOX’s adaptive optics technology.

AOX will design and fabricate the integrated adaptive optics system with sub-angstrom precision motion. According to JPL, WFIRST’s coronagraph will provide a 1,000-fold improvement in existing technology to see distant planets in other solar systems. This advancement will help the scientific community with the study of the atmospheres and conditions on exoplanets and with future missions that will search for signs of life on exoplanets.WFIRST