New Worlds Occulter performance: a first look

We have performed a large trade study of the factors affecting the performance of the New Worlds Observer occulter. This external occulter has a multidimensional requirement space and a multidimensional parameter space. Additional engineering constraints of an external occulter spacecraft makes finding the optimal occulter parameters a complicated problem. We present here the requirements space, specifically, requirements that lead to an exoplanet detection mission. We also present the occulter parameter space, factors that lead to changes in the occulter performance. We find that it is possible in almost all cases to find a solution, meaning a set of occulter parameters, which can meet requirements for an exoplanet hunting program. We present our methodology for defining and finding the solution space.