Wide-Field InfraRed Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets WFIRST-AFTA Final Report

Understand

The Astro2010 Decadal Survey recommended a Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) as its top priority for a new large space mission.

• As conceived by the decadal survey, WFIRST would carry out a dark energy science program, a microlensing program to determine the demographics of exoplanets, and a general observing program utilizing its ultra wide field.
• In October 2012, NASA chartered a Science Definition Team (SDT) to produce, in collaboration with the WFIRST Project Office at GSFC and the Program Office at JPL, a Design Reference Mission (DRM) for an implementation of WFIRST using one of the 2.4-m, Hubble-quality mirror assemblies recently made available to NASA.
• This DRM builds on the work of the earlier WFIRST SDT, reported by Green et al.