1210.7809 (Alan Dressler et al.)

Exploring the NRO Opportunity for a Hubble-sized Wide-field Near-IR Space Telescope -- NEW WFIRST    [PDF]

Alan Dressler, David Spergel, Matt Mountain, Marc Postman, Erin Elliott, Eduardo Bendek, David Bennett, Julianne Dalcanton, Scott Gaudi, Neil Gehrels, Olivier Guyon, Christopher Hirata, Jason Kalirai, N. Jeremy Kasdin, Jeff Kruk, Bruce Macintosh, Sangeeta Malhotra, Matthew Penny, Saul Perlmutter, George Rieke, Adam Riess, James Rhoads, Stuart Shaklan, Rachel Somerville, Daniel Stern, Rodger Thompson, David Weinberg

We discuss scientific, technical and programmatic issues related to the use of an NRO 2.4m telescope for the WFIRST initiative of the 2010 Decadal Survey. We show that this implementation of WFIRST, which we call "NEW WFIRST," would achieve the goals of the NWNH Decadal Survey for the WFIRST core programs of Dark Energy and Microlensing Planet Finding, with the crucial benefit of deeper and/or wider near-IR surveys for GO science and a potentially Hubble-like Guest Observer program. NEW WFIRST could also include a coronagraphic imager for direct detection of dust disks and planets around neighboring stars, a high-priority science and technology precursor for future ambitious programs to image Earth-like planets around neighboring stars.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.7809