Starlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry (STARI) mission

J. Monnier James Cutler A. Dubey Caden Burkhardt Raven St. Clair Bradley Bialke Adrien Boissy Tobey Chang Hannah Cherry Yethinder Ragav Lakshmi Kumar M. Meyer Jacob Klingler Shivani Sunil Austin Thomas Daniil Voloshin Simone D'Amico A. Rizza Ethan Foss S. Y. Low Prachet Jain E. Lightsey Althea Noonan Mark Gorrow L. Pogorelyuk Melissa Flores Albert Ostoja-Starzewski G. DeRose Jasper Heymann Alexa LaPinta Ryan Turoff G. Vasisht Kerri L. Cahoy

Aug 2026 · Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation · Vol 14145, pp. 1414512 - 1414512-12 · 1 citation · 16 references

Engineering

Abstract

We introduce the NASA-funded mission STARI (STarlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry), a two-spacecraft technology demonstrator for future long-baseline interferometers. STARI will perform, to our knowledge, the first in-space transfer of starlight between free-flying spacecraft, a critical step toward long-baseline space interferometry. Two propulsive 8U CubeSats in low Earth orbit will fly in formation with separations up to 200 m: one relays a narrow stellar beam to the other, where an off-axis parabola reimages it into a single-mode fiber. Using differential GNSS, visible LED beacons, and fast-steering mirrors in closed-loop control, we aim to sustain diffraction-limited, high-throughput fiber coupling during formation flight. STARI, targeting launch in 2029, is designed to mature key technologies needed for future mission concepts such as the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFE), which would seek atmospheric biomarkers on nearby Earth-like exoplanets.

DOI Semantic Scholar

View source