Wide Field Instrument Preliminary Design For The Wide Field Infra-Red Survey Telescope

We present the Wide Field Infra-Red Survey Telescope (WFIRST) wide field instrument concept based on the reuse of a 2.4m telescope recently made available to NASA. Two instrument channels are described, a wide field channel (similar to 0.8x0.4degrees, 300Mpix, imaging and spectroscopy over 0.76-2.0um), and an integral field unit (3x3 arcsec, 1Mpix, R{2pixel} similar to 100 over 0.6-2.0um). For this mission concept, the telescope, instruments, and spacecraft are in a geosynchronous orbit and are designed for serviceability. This instrument can accomplish not only the baseline exoplanet microlensing, dark energy, and infrared surveys for WFIRST, but can perform at higher angular resolution and with deeper observations. This enables significant opportunities for more capable general observer programs. The emphasis on achieving very good imaging stability is maintained from the previous work.