  Future high-contrast imagers on ground-based extremely large telescopes will
have to deal with the segmentation of the primary mirrors. Residual phase
errors coming from the phase steps at the edges of the segments will have to be
minimized in order to reach the highest possible wavefront correction and thus
the best contrast performance. To study these effects, we have developed the
MITHIC high-contrast testbed, which is designed to test various strategies for
wavefront sensing, including the Zernike sensor for Extremely accurate
measurements of Low-level Differential Aberrations (ZELDA) and COronagraphic
Focal-plane wave-Front Estimation for Exoplanet detection (COFFEE). We recently
equipped the bench with a new atmospheric turbulence simulation module that
offers both static phase patterns representing segmented primary mirrors and
continuous phase strips representing atmospheric turbulence filtered by an AO
or an XAO system. We present a characterisation of the module using different
instruments and wavefront sensors, and the first coronagraphic measurements
obtained on MITHIC.
