OBSERVATION SCHEDULING FOR EXOPLANET IMAGING MISSION WITH TWO STARSHADES
Based on the 2021 Decadal Survey, NASA is planning to launch a space-based observatory dedicated to Exoplanet science. This observatory will accompany a starlight-occulting spacecraft also known as starshade which will be actively controlled to fly in the line of sight (LOS) of observatory and the target star. To make an observation, the starshade has to slew between the LOS of 2 different targets while the observatory reorients and settles to the next target position for making observation. The slew time is very large compared to the observatory's settling time. To increase the efficiency of a mission and reduce the idle time between observations, we propose a mission concept involving 2 starshades. While one starshade is making observation, the second one slews to the next target. To make this possible, at a given time, the next 2 target stars should be known. This research tries to accomplish the observation scheduling algorithm for such missions. This research makes the use and contributes to the workflow of the Open Source Exoplanet Imaging Mission Simulator (EXOSIMS) and its built-in functionalities. By comparing the number of average planet detections made in an ensemble of simulations using this scheduling algorithm and a random target selecting algorithm, we demonstrate the feasibility of this research. Furthermore, we also show that this scheduling algorithm also generates more detections as compared to a single starshade mission consisting similar mission parameters.