Membrane space telescope: active surface control with radiative adaptive optics

S. Rabien; L. Busoni; C. Del Vecchio; J. Ziegleder; S. Esposito

doi:10.1117/12.3019682

23 August 2024 Membrane space telescope: active surface control with radiative adaptive optics

S. Rabien, L. Busoni, C. Del Vecchio, J. Ziegleder, S. Esposito

Proceedings Volume 13092, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2024: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave; 130925O (2024) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3019682
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2024, Yokohama, Japan

Conference Poster

Abstract

Sensitivity and resolution of space telescopes are directly related to the size of the primary mirror. Enabling such future extremely large space telescopes or even arrays of those will require to drastically reduce the areal weight of the mirror system. Utilizing a thin parabolic polymeric membrane as primary mirror offers the prospect of very low weight and the flexible nature of those membranes allows compactly store them upon launch. Upon deployment the structure is unfolded and the mirror shape restored. Being an extremely thin structure, an active shape correction is required. Utilizing a thermal control of the surface via radiative coupling, localized shape changes are imprinted into the membrane telescope. In this paper we present the modelling and experimental test of the radiative adaptive optics. A detailed modeling of the influence function of the radiative shaping onto the membrane mirror has been carried out. Experimentally we have been radiatively actuated the shape of a prototype mirror in closed loop with a wavefront sensor and proven that we can control the mirrors surface figure to a ~15nm RMS precision.

(2024) Published by SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Citation Download Citation

S. Rabien, L. Busoni, C. Del Vecchio, J. Ziegleder, and S. Esposito "Membrane space telescope: active surface control with radiative adaptive optics", Proc. SPIE 13092, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2024: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, 130925O (23 August 2024); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3019682

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