Roanoke College Starshade Challenge Team
Innovative Student Team Creates a Starshade to Block Starlight and Reveal Exoplanets
Exploring planets beyond our solar system is one of the most exciting frontiers in astronomy. But observing these planets, called exoplanets, is challenging. Recently, a team of ten Roanoke College students, including Edge on Science Instructor and Physics major Patrick Brennan, tackled one of these challenges as part of a NASA design competition.
What are exoplanets and why are they important?
Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars outside our solar system. For example, our solar system has eight planets and similarly, other solar systems in the galaxy have their own planets. There are thousands of these exoplanets across our galaxy, each with its own unique features. Discovering and studying exoplanets can help us understand how plants form and evolve. Scientists are especially interested in whether any of these planets can support life, and studying them gives us valuable insight into what makes a planet habitable.
How do we explore exoplanets?
Scientists use powerful telescopes, both on the ground and in space, to detect and examine exoplanets. However, these instruments face a significant challenge: the overwhelming glare from the host star. Imagine trying to see a firefly next to a searchlight, that’s what astronomers face when studying exoplanets. The intense light of a star can easily wash out the faint signal of its orbiting planets.
NASA Starshade Challenge
To tackle this issue, NASA challenged student scientists to design a starshade. A starshade is a special spacecraft that can block the light of a star so a telescope can better see the planets around it. The starshade would fly out in front of a telescope and block the star’s light while allowing the faint glow of the exoplanets to pass through. One way to think about this is that the starshade creates an artificial solar eclipse!
Roanoke Team Starshade Design Prototype
Starshade Team at Roanoke College
A team at Roanoke College took up this challenge. They designed a starshade focusing on a simplistic design with careful attention to its shape, deployment, and alignment. The team also had to attend to the complex design needs of a starshade. A starshade must be durable enough to withstand deep space, while also light and pliable enough to unfold on its own after deployment. It also needs to be able to respond to repositioning commands from NASA back on Earth.
Beyond meeting the strict technical requirements of the project, the team also had to scale their design into a 1:100 prototype, which is a complex engineering task on its own. On top of that, they balanced these demanding project goals with their full-time academic workloads. Rising to these challenges only makes their success that much more impressive!
After months of design and calculations, their proposed design and prototype impressed NASA’s judges. The Roanoke team placed 2nd in the national competition and earned an invitation to continue collaborating with NASA as the project moves forward.
Additional Reading
https://www.roanoke.edu/starshade
https://students.aip.org/observer/designing-a-starshade-for-space
Do you have a child interested in engineering?
Register now for our Mechanical Engineering Makerspace taught by Patrick Brennan, a member of the Roanoke College Starshade Team!
