Active optics for space telescopes

Sucher, Damien; Butel, Guillaume P.; Briche, Guillaume; Blanc, Jean-François; Liotard, Arnaud; Bernot, Marc; Carlavan, Mikael; Suau, Aurélien; Louh, Nisrine; Galtier, Lauriane; Guionie, Sebastien; Viard, Thierry; Behar-Lafenetre, Stéphanie; Champandard, Fabrice; Ghibaudo, Jean-Bernard; Costes, Vincent

doi:10.1117/12.2529103

Cited by 3 publications

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“…TANGO has been funded by CNES with Thales Alenia Space co-fundings. The first part of the TANGO program has designed, developed and qualified the key technologies through the following building block [6]:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Full scale active telescope engineering model

Guionie

Briche

Sucher

et al. 2021

International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2020

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Thales Alenia Space has designed and developed space high performance observation instruments for more than 40 years.The future missions will have to deal with better performance, better optical quality while from affordability point of view, the total mass, the development schedule and the final cost have to be reduced. These constraints induce an innovative generation of solutions based on larger entrance optics associated to high lightweight ratio. In these conditions, the enhancement of the final performance can only be guaranteed by using active optics in flight.In this context, Thales Alenia Space has been selected by French National Space Agency (CNES) to develop an active optics full scale telescope to path the way for the new class of Extremely high resolution telescopes. The whole building blocks have been already tested and qualified over the last 4 years.So, a deformable mirror is implemented in the future large telescopes in order to correct manufacturing residues, ground/flight evolution including gravity. Moreover, low mass and high agility satellites require more compact designs which implies telescope solutions more sensitive to misalignments. An active positioning mechanism is then also needed in order to correct the telescope alignment during flight conditions. A wavefront sensor is implemented in the mission focal plane and the global active loop validated. This paper presents the validation of active optic telescope on a full scale Engineering Model of 1500mm of entrance pupil diameter. All the active optic building blocks already qualified are mounted on this demonstrator. This Engineering model has followed a complete integration and alignment process that confirms the breakthrough simplification expected. The test plan validates on a full scale model the wave-front correction algorithms on-ground and in flight conditions, ensuring the best performance achievable with the telescope all along the lifetime.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Full scale active telescope engineering model

Guionie

Briche

Sucher

et al. 2021

International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2020

Self Cite

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Improving Astronomy Image Quality Through Real-time Wavefront Estimation

Thomas

Meyers

Kahn

2021

2021 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW)

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Active optics in deployable systems for future earth observation and science missions

Canas

Behar-Lafenetre

Devilliers

et al. 2021

International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2020

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This paper describes the outcomes of a study funded by the European Space Agency aimed at identifying the technical challenges and trade-offs at the system level, performing preliminary designs of an active correction loop for large deployable telescopes, and defining technological roadmaps for the development of the active correction loop for the selected designs.This study has targeted two very different application cases, one for High Resolution Earth Observation from Geostationary orbit (called GeoHR, with a 4m diameter entrance pupil) and one for Science missions requiring very large telescopes (with a up to 18 m diameter entrance pupil) with high-contrast imaging capabilities for exo-Earth observations and characterization.For both application cases, this paper first summarizes the mission objectives and constraints that have influence on the telescope designs. It then presents the high-level trade-offs that have been led and the optical and mechanical design that have been developed, including the deployable aspects.Finally, the performance assessment is presented, and is the basis for the justification of an active optics correction chain, with a preliminary set of requirements for typical components of the system. The presentation is concluded with proposed technological roadmaps that aim to allow the development of the building blocks on which the next generation instruments will be able to rely on.

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Active optics for space telescopes

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

Full scale active telescope engineering model

Full scale active telescope engineering model

Improving Astronomy Image Quality Through Real-time Wavefront Estimation

Active optics in deployable systems for future earth observation and science missions

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