OPTICAL DESIGN AND MODELING FOR THE HABITABLE WORLDS OBSERVATORY

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific opportunity focuses on research and development in the optical design and modeling of advanced space flight instrumentation for the Habitable Worlds Observatory. Mission support involves performing optical design trades, detailed optical system and component design, tolerancing, performance analyses and modeling, and specifying optical components for fabrication. Current interests include the design and modeling of centered and unobscured all-reflective and catadioptric optical systems, freeform optics, lens system design, coronagraph and star-shade design and modeling, spectroscopic instrumentation design and analysis, wavefront sensing and control of active optical systems, and polarization ray tracing including birefringent materials. Additional research topics consist of gradient index optics, holograms and holographic optical elements design, wave propagation, optomechanical design, stray light design and analysis, edge sensors, laser metrology trusses and in-process optical testing. Extensive computational resources and metrology test facilities are available for post-doc work at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.