Advance Formation Flying Technology for Spacecraft
Even small optical interferometers in space could vastly exceed the sensitivity of ground based systems, and directly image Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars, but this requires advances in precision (<1 micron) formation flying technology for spacecraft. [This is both an engineering bottleneck, and a scientific bottleneck]
Resources (4)
LIFE: Large Interferometer For Exoplanets
Initiative
The Stellar Imager Vision Mission
Initiative
A Realistic Roadmap to Formation Flying Space Interferometry
Research and Reviews
Workshop: Astronomical Optical Interferometry from the Lunar Surface
Whitepapers and Essays
R&D Gaps (1)
Space telescopes offer vastly superior sensitivity to ground-based systems, but enhancing their resolution requires spacecraft with sub-micron precision.
Angular resolution of telescopes is limited by the size of the primary optic. Coherent aperture synthesis (interferometry) gets around this by coherently combining signal from separated telescopes where the resolution is proportional to the baseline separation. This has been very successful in the radio (see Event Horizon Telescope) but in the optical regime requires extremely difficult optomechanics and controls, and the sensitivity on the ground is inherently limited by the coherence time of the atmosphere.