We present the start of the ground alignment plan for the SIM Lite Instrument. We outline the integration
and alignment of the individual benches on which all the optics are mounted, and then the alignment of the
benches to form the Science and Guide interferometers. The Instrument has a guide interferometer with only
a 40 arc-seconds field of regard, and 200 arc-seconds of alignment adjustability. This requires each sides of the
interferometer to be aligned to a fraction of that, while at the same time be orthogonal to the baseline defined
by the External Metrology Truss. The baselines of the Science and Guide interferometers must also be aligned
to be parallel.
The start of these alignment plans is captured in a SysML Instrument System model, in the form of activity
diagrams. These activity diagrams are then related to the hardware design and requirements. We finish with
future plans for the alignment and integration activities and requirements.
Main brassboard Michelson interferometer components have been recently developed for the future flight phase
implementations of SIM Lite mission. These brassboard components include two fine steering mirrors, pathlength
modulation and cyclic averaging optics and astrometric beam combiner assembly. Field-independent performance tests
will be performed in a vacuum chamber using two siderostats in retro-reflecting positions and a white light stimulus. The
brightness and color dependence of the angle and fringe tracking performance will be measured. The performance of
filtering algorithms will be tested in a simulated spacecraft attitude control system perturbation. To demonstrate
capability of a dim star observation, the angle and fringe tracking CCD sensors are cooled to -110 C using a cold diode
heat pipe system. The new feed-forward control (angle and path-length) algorithms for the dim star observation will be
tested as well. In this paper, we will report the recent progress toward the integration and performance tests of the
brassboard interferometer.
The SIM-Lite project has designed and built PZT driven precision optical mechanisms for pointing and optical pathlength
phasing. This paper will discuss the designs, the flight qualification, and performance in a space representative
environment of these dynamic optical devices. We will also discuss performance of the strain gauges bonded to the PZTs
of the SIM Fine Steering Mirror.
The SIM Lite Astrometric Observatory is to perform narrow angle astrometry to search for Earth-like planets, and global
astrometry for a broad astrophysics program, for example, mapping the distribution of dark matter in the Galaxy. The
new SIM Lite consists of two Michelson interferometers and one star tracking telescope. The main six-meter baseline
science interferometer observes a target star and a set of reference stars. The four-meter baseline interferometer (guide-1)
monitors the attitude of the instrument in the direction of a target star. The Guide-2 telescope (G2T) tracks a bright star
to monitor the attitude of the instrument in the other two orthogonal directions. A testbed has been built to demonstrate
star-tracking capability of the G2T concept using a new interferometric angle metrology system. In the presence of
simulated 0.2 arcsecond level of expected spacecraft attitude control system perturbations, the measured star-tracking
capability of the G2T testbed system is less than 43 micro-arcsecond during single narrow angle observation.
SIM PlanetQuest will be the first space-based interferometer and will allow astrometric measurements that are
several hundred times more accurate than the previous missions operating at optical wavelengths. SIM promises
to achieve microarcsecond accuracy for astrometry on objects as faint as 20th visual magnitude. One of the
challenges is to achieve this accuracy at these dim levels, in the presence of even dimmer stars inside the SIM's
FOV. Therefore it is important to investigate the effects of "confusion" fields on astrometric performance for
SIM. This study will look at effects of Angle Tracking Camera performance for SIM in presence of a crowded
or confusion field near a target star. This will lead to a study that predicts SIM astrometric performance in
a crowded field. Centroid displacements due to any perturbation including a crowded field cause a shift in the
fringe and reduce visibility and performance. In this work we will devise an estimator to estimate the bias in
the centroid of SIM Angle Tracking camera in presence of a crowded field. This analysis will examine pointing
accuracy performance by estimating Angle Tracking centroid under different parameter variations that affect
performance. These parameters are number of neighboring stars, stellar types, and angular separation as well
as their relative brightness.
The SIM Instrument Model performs single tile simulations for the SIM Instrument. It provides a tool to
combine the effects of errors in the different subsystems such as the science interferometer, guide interferometer,
external metrology sensor, and roll sensor. The inputs to the Instrument Model are the sensor errors for the
internal instrument measurements. These errors can be derived from testbeds or other physical models. The Instrument
Model perturbs ideal sensors and replicates the fundamental SIM processing called delay regularization.
This process reconstructs the science interferometer measurements by using additional sensor measurements. The
output of the Instrument Model is the regularized delay, which is the principal science measurement for various
observing scenarios such as Wide Angle Grid, and Narrow Angle observations. The primary role of the
Instrument Model has been single tile performance prediction but it also serves as variety of different system
engineering activities such as validation of the SIM Astrometric Error Budget, demonstration of SIM's capability
for picometer sensing for the SIM Technology Milestone 8, development of instrument calibrations, analysis of
system level errors, and validation of the averaging approach for the science data processing. The Instrument
Model will continue to be an integral part of the SIM modeling plan to predict single tile performance for the
SIM mission.
KEYWORDS: Stars, Interferometers, Charge-coupled devices, Visualization, Superposition, Target detection, Photons, Signal detection, Error analysis, Signal to noise ratio
SIM PlanetQuest will measure star positions to an accuracy of a few microarcseconds using precise white light
fringe measurements. One challenge for the SIM observation scenario is "star confusion," where multiple stars
are present in the instrument field of view. This is especially relevant for observing dim science targets because
the density of number of stars increases rapidly with star magnitude. We study the effect of star confusion on
the SIM astrometric performance due to systematic fringe errors caused by the extra photons from the confusion
star(s). Since star confusion from multiple stars may be analyzed as a linear superposition of the effect from single
star confusion, we quantify the astrometric errors due to single star confusion surveying over many spectral types,
including A0V, F0V, K5III, and M0V, and for various visual magnitude differences. To the leading order, the
star confusion effect is characterized by the magnitude difference, spectral difference, and the angular separation
between the target and confusion stars.
Strategies for dealing with star confusion are presented. For example, since the presence of additional sources
in the field of view leads to inconsistent delay estimates from different channels, with sufficient signal to noise
ratio, the star confusion can be detected using chi-square statistics of fringe measurements from multiple spectral
channels. An interesting result is that the star confusion can be detected even though the interferometer cannot
resolve the separation between the target and confusion stars when their spectra are sufficiently different. Other
strategies for mitigating the star confusion effect are also discussed.
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