First flight results from PICTURE-D, a NASA balloon mission to directly image debris disks

Abstract

Planetary Imaging Coronagraph Testbed Using a Recoverable Experiment for Debris Disks (PICTURE-D) is a NASA high-altitude balloon mission to directly image exoplanetary systems with the goal of characterizing the inner debris disks of several nearby stars in reflected visible light. The observatory performed its first balloon flight on October 1, 2025 from the NASA CSBF launch facility in Ft. Sumner, NM. The experiment consists of a 60 cm off-axis telescope coupled with a coronagraph instrument containing high and low-order wavefront control systems, dual BMC MEMS deformable mirrors and a charge 6 vector vortex focal plane mask. During the 20 hour flight, 4 stars were observed: Vega, Altair, Fomalhaut and the Gamma Cassiopeiae binary system. On-sky contrast was limited to the 10-6 level due to poor EFC dark hole convergence and residual pointing jitter owing to a throughput issue with one of the low-order wavefront sensors. We present the observational results from the flight and a description of the technical performance of the observatory sub-systems.