NASA's Starshade Is Like a Giant Visor for the Stars

[Nick] The starshade is like a large bicycle wheel

but it has to fit on top of a rocket.

So when we launch it, it deploys its petals,

it then expands its inner structure,

almost to the size of a baseball diamond.

This large structure has its own propulsion system

and it propels itself in the direction of a target star

and then the telescope will lag behind

and then it blocks that light from the star

and then you can take a picture of it.

We are really excited about exoplanets

for one of the oldest question known to mankind,

are we alone?

An exoplanet is a planet that orbits another star.

Over 90 per cent of all the exoplanets

that have been discovered, have not actually been imaged

because the star's so bright and the planet

is so faint.

The biggest technology is being able

to block the glare of the star.

In this room here, this is our starshade laboratory.

We are developing technologies to do just that.

[David] So, one important aspect of the starshade

is that, you cannot just have a disc.

The light will bend around the disc into the telescope.

So, what you need is a precisely shaped starshade

that bends the light around the petals

and into an annulus around the telescope.

One of the biggest challenges is

we have this very large 22-meter diameter starshade

for these six-meter petals that has to stow

into a very small five-meter launch fairing.

We had an engineer here

that was working on origami-inspired solar rays

and he came up with this design

that can take a flat sheet and stow it up,

and as you can see here,

as it deploys, it deploys out

into a starshade-like structure.

This hardware we developed to look at

how do we wrap the petals and time down for launch.

So, you can imagine,

each one of these long set of metal spines here,

represents the petals in their length.

So, what we can do is practice stowing up pairs of petals

and figuring out how do we tie them down for launch.

One of the goals of our technology development here,

is to be ready to fly in the mid-2020s.

[Nick] If we can find planets that have atmospheres

and maybe rocky planets like our own earth

that increases the possibilities that life may exist.

(dramatic music)