However, the telescope needs to be equipped with a Diffractive Pupil, which serves as an absolute astrometric ruler on board by populating the image plane with diffraction features. Two bright stars occupying a narrow field leverages strong fundamental gains in signal-to-noise allowing compelling science within a modest mission profile. The TOLIMAN mission concept sidesteps these problems for the special case of planets orbiting bright binary stars. Although the target stars are generally very bright, the final signal-to-noise is entirely limited by the requirement to observe fainter field stars over wide areas of the sky. High precision astrometry can detect the small angular displacement of a star due to gravitational perturbation by its orbiting planets. The impact of the detection of a single temperate rocky planet orbiting one of the nearest Sun-like stars can hardly be overstated such a discovery would be a target of keen astrobiological interest and will shape the future of direct imaging and characterization efforts for years to come. Although thousands of planetary systems are known, astronomers have scant knowledge of temperate rocky planets not a single Earth-analog orbiting a Sun-like star has been detected within 10 pc. Our baseline mission concept uses a 9 cm telescope to obtain relative astrometry measurements of the binary at sufficient precision to detect planets down to sub-Earth mass throughout the Habitable Zones of both a Cen A & B. We propose a low-cost mission concept called TOLIMAN dedicated to the detection of Earth-mass exoplanets in temperate orbits around the two nearest Sun-like stars: Alpha Centauri (a Cen) A & B.
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