Honeycomb Mirrors for Large Telescopes

Hill, John M.; Martin, Hubert M.; Angel, J. R. P.

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5621-2_4

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…To use a borosilicate mirror on the ground requires active control to minimize thermal and gravitationallyinduced wavefront gradients. 77 Similarly in space, thermal gradients and distortions due to the support structure or gravitational release must be corrected via actuators and/or thermal figuring. To design a system that can correct these errors, they must be predicted with sufficient margin prior to launch.…”

Section: Active Optical Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This approach was applied by the HST Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS). 103 Following the scaling relations described in Hill et al (2013) [77, §1.5.7] we can approximate the thermal requirements for a borosilicate primary mirror. A typical UA mirror figure is ∼14 nm RMS surface, 28 nm RMS wavefront error (WFE), after removal of low-order modes.…”

Section: Active Optical Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Approaches to lowering the cost of large space telescopes

Douglas,

Aldering,

Allan

et al. 2023

Astronomical Optics: Design, Manufacture, and Test of Space and Ground Systems IV

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New development approaches, including launch vehicles and advances in sensors, computing, and software, have lowered the cost of entry into space, and have enabled a revolution in low-cost, high-risk Small Satellite (SmallSat) missions. To bring about a similar transformation in larger space telescopes, it is necessary to reconsider the full paradigm of space observatories. Here we will review the history of space telescope development and cost drivers, and describe an example conceptual design for a low cost 6.5 m optical telescope to enable new science when operated in space at room temperature. It uses a monolithic primary mirror of borosilicate glass, drawing on lessons and tools from decades of experience with ground-based observatories and instruments, as well as flagship space missions. It takes advantage, as do large launch vehicles, of increased computing power and space-worthy commercial electronics in low-cost active predictive control systems to maintain stability. We will describe an approach that incorporates science and trade study results that address driving requirements such as integration and testing costs, reliability, spacecraft jitter, and wavefront stability in this new risk-tolerant "LargeSat" context.

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Section: Active Optical Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Active Optical Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Approaches to lowering the cost of large space telescopes

Douglas,

Aldering,

Allan

et al. 2023

Astronomical Optics: Design, Manufacture, and Test of Space and Ground Systems IV

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Active correction experiments on a 4-m thin primary mirror

Tang

Guo

et al. 2021

Opt. Express

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Active optics is an important technology for improving the observation performance of large telescopes. For active optics with hard points, the hard points determine a reference plane for aberration correction. Relative movement to the reference plane will cause dents at the hard points, thus degrading the active correction effect. Herein, a compensation plane is proposed to solve the nonzero problem at hard points for surface detection and surface fitting. A series of experiments are designed on a 4-m thin mirror to illustrate the function of the compensation plane for active optics with hard points. The results show that the method is effective in avoiding the relative movement to the reference plane. With the compensation plane, the measured influence functions are more reasonable, and the dents after correction can be eliminated, which significantly reduces the fitting error of the 4-m thin mirror.

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Honeycomb Mirrors for Large Telescopes

Cited by 2 publications

References 100 publications

Approaches to lowering the cost of large space telescopes

Approaches to lowering the cost of large space telescopes

Active correction experiments on a 4-m thin primary mirror

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