New Worlds Observer Mission Design

New Worlds Observer is an external starshade mission designed to observe Earth-like planets around nearby stars. A telescope spacecraft operates in the “shadow” cast by a starshade spacecraft, located tens of thousands of kilometers away. We explore the requirements that these two free-flying spacecraft place on the orbital, propulsion, control, and communication systems and some baseline solutions for each. This concept is young and we are still learning about how the system operates. However, we have developed a strawman design that meets all of the NWO mission requirements.