Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published September 2004 | Published
Journal Article Open

ARGOS testbed: study of multidisciplinary challenges of future spaceborne interferometric arrays

Abstract

Future spaceborne interferometric arrays must meet stringent optical performance and tolerance requirements while exhibiting modularity and acceptable manufacture and integration cost levels. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Adaptive Reconnaissance Golay-3 Optical Satellite (ARGOS) is a wide-angle Fizeau interferometer spacecraft testbed designed to address these research challenges. Designing a space-based stellar interferometer, which requires tight tolerances on pointing and alignment for its apertures, presents unique multidisciplinary challenges in the areas of structural dynamics, controls, and multiaperture phasing active optics. In meeting these challenges, emphasis is placed on modularity in spacecraft subsystems and optics as a means of enabling expandability and upgradeability. A rigorous theory of beam-combining errors for sparse optical arrays is derived and flown down to the design of various subsystems. A detailed elaboration on the optics system and control system is presented based on the performance requirements and beam-combining error tolerances. The space environment is simulated by floating ARGOS on a frictionless air-bearing that enables it to track both fast and slow moving targets.

Additional Information

© 2004 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. Paper 030610 received Dec. 2, 2003; accepted for publication Mar. 5, 2004. This paper is a revision of a paper presented at the SPIE conference on Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, Waikoloa, Hawaii, August 2002. The paper presented there appears (unrefereed) in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4849. This research was supported by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Director's Innovation Initiative (DII) under contracts number NRO-000-01-C-0207. The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Dr. Carl Blaurock at Midé Technology Corporation and Dr. Alice K. Liu at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Attached Files

Published - argos_oe_final.pdf

Files

argos_oe_final.pdf
Files (1.1 MB)
Name Size Download all
md5:3ffd6d651292f9de59534c42c6a05e83
1.1 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023