Wavefront sensor for the ESA-GAIA mission

Vosteen, L. L. A.; Draaisma, F.; Werkhoven, W.P. van; Riel, L. J. M. van; Mol, M.; Ouden, G. den

doi:10.1117/12.825240

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…The focal plane of Gaia is equipped with two wave-front sensors (WFSs; Vosteen et al 2009). These allow monitoring of the optical performance of the telescopes and deriving information to drive the M2 mirror mechanisms to (re-)align and (re-)focus the telescopes (Sect.…”

Section: Wave-front Sensormentioning

confidence: 99%

TheGaiamission

Prusti¹,

Bruijne²,

Brown³

et al. 2016

A&A

5,534

1,139

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Gaia is a cornerstone mission in the science programme of the European Space Agency (ESA). The spacecraft construction was approved in 2006, following a study in which the original interferometric concept was changed to a direct-imaging approach. Both the spacecraft and the payload were built by European industry. The involvement of the scientific community focusses on data processing for which the international Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) was selected in 2007. Gaia was launched on 19 December 2013 and arrived at its operating point, the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth-Moon system, a few weeks later. The commissioning of the spacecraft and payload was completed on 19 July 2014. The nominal five-year mission started with four weeks of special, ecliptic-pole scanning and subsequently transferred into full-sky scanning mode. We recall the scientific goals of Gaia and give a description of the as-built spacecraft that is currently (mid-2016) being operated to achieve these goals. We pay special attention to the payload module, the performance of which is closely related to the scientific performance of the mission. We provide a summary of the commissioning activities and findings, followed by a description of the routine operational mode. We summarise scientific performance estimates on the basis of in-orbit operations. Several intermediate Gaia data releases are planned and the data can be retrieved from the Gaia Archive, which is available through the Gaia home page.

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Section: Wave-front Sensormentioning

confidence: 99%

TheGaiamission

Prusti¹,

Bruijne²,

Brown³

et al. 2016

A&A

5,534

1,139

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“…The ongoing Gaia mission employs a passive Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor 17 and a wide variety of new wavefront sensing techniques are being developed for future space telescopes. [18][19][20] A simplified optical layout in Fig.…”

Section: Wavefront Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wavefront sensing in space: flight demonstration II of the PICTURE sounding rocket payload

Douglas

Mendillo

Cook

et al. 2018

J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst.

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A NASA sounding rocket for high-contrast imaging with a visible nulling coronagraph, the Planet Imaging Concept Testbed Using a Rocket Experiment (PICTURE) payload, has made two suborbital attempts to observe the warm dust disk inferred around Epsilon Eridani. The first flight in 2011 demonstrated a 5 milliarcsecond fine pointing system in space. The reduced flight data from the second launch, on 25 November 2015, presented herein, demonstrate active sensing of wavefront phase in space. Despite several anomalies in flight, post-facto reduction phase stepping interferometer data provides insight into the wavefront sensing precision and the system stability for a portion of the pupil. These measurements show the actuation of a 32×32-actuator microelectromechanical system deformable mirror. The wavefront sensor reached a median precision of 1.4 nanometers per pixel, with 95% of samples between 0.8 and 12.0 nanometers per pixel. The median system stability, including telescope and coronagraph wavefront errors other than tip, tilt, and piston, was 3.6 nanometers per pixel, with 95% of samples between 1.2 and 23.7 nanometers per pixel.

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“…4 Basically, they provide five degrees of freedom (three translations and two rotations) control over the secondary mirrors, which has been sufficient to obtain a superb image quality. Two WaveFront Sensors (WFS) provide key information to avoid blind exploration of the 5-D actuation parameter space.…”

Section: Focus Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The analysis of the additional straylight is given in Sect. 4. The basic angle variations are discussed in detail in Sect.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gaia: focus, straylight and basic angle

Mora

Biermann²,

Bombrun

et al. 2016

SPIE Proceedings

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The Gaia all-sky astrometric survey is challenged by several issues affecting the spacecraft stability. Amongst them, we find the focus evolution, straylight and basic angle variations Contrary to pre-launch expectations, the image quality is continuously evolving, during commissioning and the nominal mission. Payload decontaminations and wavefront sensor assisted refocuses have been carried out to recover optimum performance. An ESA-Airbus DS working group analysed the straylight and basic angle issues and worked on a detailed root cause analysis. In parallel, the Gaia scientists have also analysed the data, most notably comparing the BAM signal to global astrometric solutions, with remarkable agreement.In this contribution, a status review of these issues will be provided, with emphasis on the mitigation schemes and the lessons learned for future space missions where extreme stability is a key requirement.

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Wavefront sensor for the ESA-GAIA mission

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

TheGaiamission

TheGaiamission

Wavefront sensing in space: flight demonstration II of the PICTURE sounding rocket payload

Gaia: focus, straylight and basic angle

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