WaveDriver: a laser guide star AO system for HWO

Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) presents a key challenge for technology development in the coming years, requiring a >100× more stable system than JWST. WaveDriver is a concept for a laser guide star spacecraft coupled to an adaptive optics (AO) system onboard HWO that would enable HWO to reach its picometer-level wavefront stability requirements while relaxing other HWO subsystem requirements. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and University of California Santa Cruz, we are revisiting the concept initially proposed by Douglas et al. (2019). We present key initial results from the first phase of our project, including (1) AO control developments, including Linear Quadratic Gaussian control and machine learning, (2) AO wavefront sensor (WFS) trade study simulations, and (3) simulations of a photonic lantern natural guide star WFS. A key finding from our work is that WaveDriver could be needed to enable HWO’s primary mirror segment stability and/or low-order wavefront stability requirements.