JPL’s Starshade, currently in development, intends to block sunlight from the suns of extrasolar planetary systems, allowing existing telescope technology to distant orbiting objects with increased sensitivity. The project has been in development for decades, and has reached Technology Readiness Level 5. In effort to secure additional funding and push to TRL 6, JPL contracted Newton to conduct high fidelity thermo-elastic analysis of the latest design, demonstrating the occulter’s optical feasibility.

I first performed a review of existing analysis and hardware testing. I collaborated with the JPL team to determine desired outcomes and model fidelity requirements. I then produced a thermal model (Thermal Desktop), updated from an inherited model, and a structural model (FEMAP) from scratch. The structure’s on-orbit optical integrity depends on stability in the micron range, so I took extreme care with geometry, element density, and property assignment. I created high-fidelity breakout models of critical areas to validate modeling techniques with JPL prototype test results.

Temperature gradients from the Thermal Desktop model were mapped onto the FEM and used as inputs for thermo-elastic strain simulations. Processing and presenting results was challenging due to the number of elements in both models. I created a VBA macro to import data from runs into a formatted Excel sheet, which automatically calculated optical outcomes from strain results.

I synthesized processes and results into a technical report, which JPL iterated and published as Milestone 6B.